SAN DIEGO — The recent flooding has devastated people living in the Tijuana River Valley, with many calling for Congress to send emergency funding to address contamination in the cross-border river.
Picking his way around puddles, Matthew Benedickt said the land around D & J Stables is still treacherous. He can’t safely ride his horses through the sludge and he worries the water is harmful to both humans and animals.
“There is no way that I can think that that muddy, nasty human feces water is going to be good for anything,” Benedickt said.
For nearly a century, people who live in the Tijuana River Valley have suffered from raw sewage in the water that flows from Tijuana into San Diego. The International Boundary and Water Commission estimates the ferocious storms that have hit San Diego County this year have caused billions of gallons of raw sewage to flow from Mexico into California.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and other San Diego County elected officials are pushing Congress to approve $310 million in funding to fix and expand the international wastewater treatment plant in San Diego.
Bethany Case works with Clean Border Water Now and said Smuggler’s Gulch, a steep-walled canyon on the border, has become a trash highway.
“I can see I think like a piece of a body of a car, maybe? But there’s like 15-20 tires,” Case said. “We know that there are toxic chemicals in this water, we know that this is diluted sewage, but sewage nonetheless.”
Case lives in Imperial Beach and has been advocating for her community for years.
“This river shed is going back and forth and if we just fix it on one side of the other, it doesn’t help. We have to do both,” she said.
She hopes the devastating floods help raise awareness about cross-border pollution so they can get the help they need.
“We’re just hoping that this kind of creates more of an uproar. It becomes more obvious, because we really just need this money to come through,” Case said. “We need the government to help fund these projects so that we can take care of this.”
Benedickt said he is concerned about his health and the health of his animals every time it floods.
“If you go down here, if you live down here, if you board horses down here, anything like that, you just know it’s absolutely disgusting,” he said.
He knows more rain is on the way and worries what that means for the valley he loves.
“I think if the water would just run and then the trash wouldn’t get in, it would be like step one,” he said. “Put our foot forward with something and stop with the trash.”
Many farmers in the area also say they are having to throw away entire crops because the sewage contaminated the plants are they aren’t fit to eat. The state Legislature also introduced a resolution urging the president to declare the sewage crisis an emergency.