Tracking IB's 'smelly water'

By Mike Lee, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Originally published July 27, 2010 at 10 p.m., updated July 28, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.

For the past decade, surfers and others have complained about an unusual odor wafting over the sand and waves of Imperial Beach.
It’s often described as having a detergentlike quality, and it comes with shimmery bubbles in the surf zone. One scientific paper calls it “smelly water.”
For just as long, the on-again-off-again scent has defied attempts to determine its source and answer questions about whether it poses dangers for beach users.
“We are really concerned because our noses and all of our physical senses when we are in the water are telling us one thing, and the tests are telling us another,” said Ben McCue, a surfer and coastal program manager for the nonprofit group Wildcoast in Imperial Beach.
In recent weeks, conservationists have fashioned a plan to solve the mystery using high-end tests that go beyond the typical sampling for indicator bacteria in coastal waters. They said the issue is resurfacing now because upgrades at the International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Ysidro are nearly done after years of debate, allowing beach advocates to focus on other issues in one of the county’s most polluted areas.
“We are going to nail it down this summer,” McCue said.
As usual, the main barrier is money — an estimated $15,000 to look for chemical clues that can help pinpoint the source of the odor, which is widely thought to be from wastewater. It will take more time and money to determine whether the impurities cause human health problems.
The San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board, which regulates water pollution in the area, offered about $14,000 for testing several weeks ago. Those funds were only available until the fiscal year ended June 30. No reports of odor problems surfaced during the testing window, so the plan was shelved.
Regional board officials said they are trying to free up money from fines paid by polluters to underwrite the analysis. Until that happens, they are unsure about how to view the occasional stink.
“That is one of the reasons I am interested in exploring this further — to find out what we don’t know,” said David Gibson, head of the regional board. “It’s worthwhile investigating.”
A natural suspect is the Tijuana River, which for decades has carried sewage-tainted runoff from Mexico to South Bay beaches during the rainy season.
What worries McCue is that the unsettling smell occurs in the summer when the river isn’t flowing to the Pacific Ocean.
Instead, beach users have noticed the odors when nearshore currents are moving north. Some have also linked it to southwest winds.
One leading theory is that the smell is from the South Bay Ocean Outfall, which deposits treated sewage from the United States and Mexico about 3.5 miles offshore near Imperial Beach.
McCue and others said it’s more likely that the smell is from treated and untreated sewage dumped into the surf zone roughly five miles south of the U.S.-Mexico border at Punta Bandera.
The plume from Punta Bandera typically travels south but it moves north across the border about 12 percent of the time, according to a 2009 paper by Eric Terrill, director of the Coastal Observing Research and Development Center at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
His research wasn’t designed to pin down the funky odor.
“Right now, I don’t think we have a gold-standard test that has said unequivocally that it is Punta Bandera,” Terrill said. “Wildcoast is on the right track. … A special study needs to be done.”
One reason the odor mystery remains unsolved is that standard beach water tests assess fecal indicator bacteria, which can be killed by treatment or diluted to the point that they are not found.
The problem is that there still could be harmful viruses or other pollutants in “smelly water” even if the bacteria aren’t detected.
Clay Clifton, watershed monitoring program manager for San Diego Coastkeeper, said he started hearing about the strange smells shortly after he started working at the county’s Department of Environmental Health in the late 1990s.
“We said, ‘Let’s document that there is a contamination event happening,’ ” Clifton said. “This happened year after year where we went out with our traditional bacterial analysis, collected samples and processed them. … We never had any exceedances (of water-quality standards).
“We were scratching our heads and wondering what is going on,” Clifton said.
Any new sampling efforts likely will target ingredients in laundry soap. Some detergents used in Mexico aren’t approved in the United States, making them useful indicators of where wastewater originates.
In addition, tests may look at caffeine or artificial sweeteners, traces of which could connect the odors to human excrement and raise concerns about the potential for waterborne illnesses. That kind of chemical fingerprinting is several times more expensive than fecal indicator tests.
“Usually when you test the water, you know what you are looking for,” McCue said. “In this case, we are trying to figure out what’s in the water. It’s almost a reverse investigation.”
Even if the regional board agrees to finance a study, success will hinge on the smell lingering long enough to get several water samples.
“These events come and go depending on what the surf is doing,” Clifton said. “You could very easily miss it.”

Sick of Sewage

Reactions to 2.1 Million Gallon Sewage Spill in Tijuana River Valley

Written by Jen Kovecses

Of San Diego’s eleven watersheds, the Tijuana River watershed is the largest. Most of it lies on the Mexican side of the border. It is also the watershed with some of the worst sewage pollution in our region. When you hear about Imperial Beach being closed because of high bacteria counts, it is a good bet that the sewage causing the problem came from Mexico. After years of squabbling over how to fix the problem – building the Bajagua treatment plant, upgrading other facilities – there seemed to be enough political drama to start a Mexican soap opera but no real solution to the problem. In April of this year, La Morita sewage treatment plant opened in Tijuana. This plant will treat much of the sewage in the Tijuana region and reclaim some of that treated wastewater for use in the irrigation of an adjacent nursery. The trees grown with that reclaimed water will be planted throughout Baja California. This plant is a big step towards being the first region in Mexico to treat 100% of its sewage.

Needless to say, it was with dismay that I read the news on Sunday that there had been an enormous spill – 2.1 million gallons of raw sewage – in the Tijuana River Valley at the beginning of June. Maybe more alarming than the spill itself is that none of it was captured by the International Boundary and Water Commission’s facility. The IWBC treatment facility was designed specifically to capture these types of flows. The foreign origin of the problem and the federal status of the IWBC facility have put this spill outside of the regulatory reach of the Regional Water Quality Control Board and it seems that in addition to no clean-up, there will be no real enforcement action either.

While news of this spill is a sad reminder of the many infrastructure problems of the border region, we need to stay focused on the positive steps that have been taken to remedy the problem. Less than ten years ago, it was not uncommon to open your morning newspaper to read a story about huge volumes of sewage flowing untreated into San Diego’s creeks and bays. These spills would leave behind a wake of pollution that fouled our shorelines and exposed surfers and swimmers to micro-organisms that can make people sick. In the face of government and regulatory inaction, groups like San Diego Coastkeeper stepped in with advocacy, including a lawsuit to force upgrades to our wastewater collection system. Since that time, we have seen a huge drop in sewage spills. So we know with enough pressure and will that change can happen.

Spills suggest problems aren't under control

Second sewage overflow since June flows into U.S.
By Mike Lee, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Originally published July 20, 2010 at 2:05 p.m., updated July 20, 2010 at 9:24 p.m.

A second major wastewater overflow in Tijuana since the start of June has sullied the Tijuana River Valley in southern San Diego County.
More than 2.7 million gallons of sewage-tainted water coursed through the dry river bed on July 7 and 8, according to state and federal reports. No health problems have been linked to the spill.
It came just over a month after more than 2.1 million gallons of sewage crossed the international border downstream at the base of a canyon known as Smuggler’s Gulch.
Both are among the largest wastewater accidents to affect San Diego County since 2000. Because both incidents started in Mexico, California regulators have little leverage to issue fines or cleanup orders like they typically would if a local city caused the problem.
Despite major improvements to Tijuana’s sewage system in recent years, the back-to-back spills during dry weather suggest that long-running problems aren’t entirely under control.
“Although this spill did not cause direct human health impact, it is evidence that there are still improvements to be made. … We need increased funding for border environmental infrastructure,” said Paloma Aguirre, a conservationist with the nonprofit group Wildcoast in Imperial Beach.
Officials at the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board said Tuesday they are considering how to handle the two sewage overflows, likely with a consultation or letter requesting details about the incidents in hopes of improving reporting protocol and warding off future problems.
Senior engineer Brian Kelley at the regional board said he has seen numerous similar problems over the past three decades.
“It’s somewhat frustrating,” he said. “But it didn’t raise a huge red flag because we are used to it.”
Leaders at Tijuana’s water and wastewater agency said the incident mainly involved drinking water that was discharged into the river to clear a pipe and repair a leak.
A report from the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which manages wastewater facilities along the U.S.-Mexico border, said the problem started about 9 a.m. July 7, when a break in a drinking-water line filled a concrete channel in Mexico and mixed with treated sewage.
Public works officials in Tijuana failed to increase pumping capacity to handle the extra load, resulting in an overflow to San Diego County, according to the boundary commission.
It said the flows were largely absorbed into the dry Tijuana River bed and did not reach as far as the bridge at Dairy Mart Road in San Ysidro, roughly 1.5 miles northwest of where the river enters the United States.
The line break was repaired about 24 hours later.
A second report filed with environmental regulators in California said drinking water was not harmed and there were no known injuries related to the spill.
That incident came on the heels of a smaller spill a month earlier. On June 2 and 3, roughly 5 million gallons of wastewater from a line break in Mexico flowed through Smuggler’s Gulch to a structure in the United States that was designed to divert such flows to a treatment plant in San Ysidro.
In that case, boundary commission officials said they suffered from a pump failure and having a pipe out of service, leaving them unable to capture about 2.1 million gallons of sewage that contaminated parts of the river valley.
Staff writer Sandra Dibble contributed to this report.

Beach may have a scoop

Sand-replenishing project appears resurrected, thanks to Army Corps
By Janine Zúñiga UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Thursday, July 15, 2010 at midnight

Sand replenishing could begin in the fall if approvals are granted by the Imperial Beach City Council, San Diego port officials and the Army Corps of Engineers.
A plan to bring 300,000 cubic yards of sand to Imperial Beach’s shore may be back on track.
A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers project to deepen the San Diego Bay entrance called for dumping the sand early last year just off Imperial Beach’s coast. The project was postponed indefinitely in October because of permitting delays and scaled back to 100,000 cubic yards after logistic complications prevented the placement of the beach-quality sand closer to the city’s shoreline.
Since then, the Army Corps agreed to forego the use of its larger but limited dredging equipment in place of a contractor’s smaller and more maneuverable apparatus. Additionally, the San Diego Unified Port District agreed to take $1 million of $1.8 million previously approved for a larger, more uncertain federal sand renourishment project in Imperial Beach and redirect about $300,000 of it for the bay-sand project.
Both actions allow for the original 300,000 cubic yards of sand to be deposited closer to the city’s beach.
All that’s left now is getting the changes approved.
The Imperial Beach City Council agreed last week to ask the Army Corps to enter into an agreement allowing both to participate in the San Diego Harbor Maintenance Dredging Project. They also agreed to use the Port District’s $300,000 for the project.
Without threatening any future federal funding for the larger Silver Strand Shoreline Renourishment Project, Imperial Beach is looking for ways to keep all of its sand-replenishment options open.
The council also agreed to ask the state Department of Boating and Waterways about redirecting $4.2 million also earmarked for the Silver Strand project for a third sand project, this one proposed by the San Diego Association of Governments. The council also supported the use of $700,000 in port funding, the balance of the $1 million, toward SANDAG’s Regional Beach Sand Project.
“We’re exploring other potential options to fund the most imminent projects as soon as possible,” said Greg Wade, community development director.
The SANDAG project is a repeat of a 2001 effort that placed 2.1 million cubic yards of sand on county beaches.
The Silver Strand Shoreline Renourishment Project, which was sidelined last year after it received no funding in this year’s federal energy and water appropriations bill, was authorized in 2007. City officials had hoped funding would follow.
The Shoreline Renourishment Project would place 1.6 million cubic yards of sand on the Imperial Beach shore, with periodic deposits for 50 years. A funding request has been submitted for next year’s appropriations bill.
Right now, the best hope is for the city to get sand from the Army Corps’ bay-deepening project.
Wade said he hopes to get all city approvals for that in place for the July 21 council meeting. The Port District also needs to approve the agreements, as does the Army Corps. He said work could begin as early as this fall.
The SANDAG project won’t get started until 2012.
The Port District has asked that if it funds the bay-dredging project, the Army Corps and Imperial Beach should establish a long-term dredging arrangement.

No cleanup in huge TJ sewage spill

Mexican discharge raises jurisdictional, legal issues By Mike Lee

A mechanical breakdown and construction work at some U.S. sewage facilities allowed more than 2.1 million gallons of wastewater from Mexico to flood the Tijuana River Valley in San Diego County in early June.
Unlike most other spills of that size, it has prompted scant enforcement action by water-quality regulators and no cleanup.
The incident ranks as one of the county’s largest sewage-related accidents in the past decade, and one that likely would prompt hundreds of thousands of dollars in penalties if it was caused by a local agency.
A top regulator at the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board said he doesn’t plan to issue fines because the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission is exempt from them under the principle of sovereign immunity.
Federal facilities can deflect some environmental fines under a legal theory that is thought to have its roots in Britain. The policy shielded the king from being sued in his own courts. Congress has removed the waiver from various laws but not the Clean Water Act.
“We have one hand tied effectively behind our back,” said David Gibson, executive officer of the regional board.
Gibson said the investigation has been complicated because the discharge started in Mexico, where he has no authority.
The boundary commission took required steps to notify local agencies about the sewage spill in a report but didn’t try to recapture the liquid, Gibson said. He said it’s not clear what restoration steps the commission must take because it didn’t cause the spill.
“We are going to have a meeting with them to clarify roles and responsibilities, and coming out of that we will consider our compliance options,” he said.
Alternatives include issuing a cleanup order, but Gibson wouldn’t commit to a strategy before consulting with the commission.
He also said the overflow raised questions about the level of maintenance the federal agency must do at its sewage diversion structures.
“That is certainly one of those things we will address in black and white … in the next permit” issued for operating those facilities, Gibson said.
Commission spokeswoman Sally Spener said her agency took precautions to prevent the wastewater spill from reaching the river valley, but that its efforts were undermined by “unforeseeable circumstances.” Spener said the commission has not changed any policy or procedure because of the incident.
“I think that everyone who is involved with this understands that the true solution is to have improvements in the wastewater collection system in Mexico,” Spener said.
Other regulators said that is not the only issue.
“Even though the source is south of the border, it is bypassing U.S. taxpayer-funded infrastructure that was designed to capture that flow,” said Bart Christensen, a senior engineer for the State Water Resources Control Board in Sacramento who has spent 25 years working on wastewater issues in the San Diego-Tijuana region.
“If there were (millions of gallons) of sewage spilled anywhere else, you couldn’t say, ‘Well, gee. We were working on something, therefore our system was down,’ ” Christensen said.
South Bay conservationist Paloma Aguirre was planning a trash cleanup event for the nonprofit group Wildcoast in early June when she noticed sewage streaming through the Tijuana River Valley.
“It was black and there was a definite smell,” Aguirre said.
The source was uphill in Mexico, where an estimated 5 million gallons of sewage were released June 2 and 3 and then funneled to the United States through Smuggler’s Gulch.
On the U.S. side of the border, that region is sparsely populated by farmers and ranchers. Much of the nearby land is protected habitat for birds and other species.
Problems in Smuggler’s Gulch started the morning of June 2 after workers in Tijuana shut down the Matadero Pump Station to fix a broken sewage line, according to a report by the boundary commission.
The commission’s report said the Smuggler’s Gulch collector captured all the wastewater from Mexico until 4:30 p.m. At that point, the pumps couldn’t keep up and the sewage ran into the Tijuana River Valley until about 8 a.m. the next day, the report said.
Spener said one of the boundary commission’s pipes for shunting sewage to its nearby wastewater treatment plant was out of service at the time because another pipe was being placed underneath it during upgrades to the system. She said the project had been coordinated with officials in Mexico in hopes of avoiding problems.
“We waited to cut (the pipe) until we thought we were ‘all clear’ regarding potential spills,” Spener said. “We still had one line in service and we felt that would be adequate to handle any flows that came across” from Mexico.
She said the temporary system was working until a breaker on one pump kept tripping, forcing it out of action.



MAJOR SEWAGE SPILLS
Over the past decade, San Diego County has had several spills of more than 1 million gallons. The incidents include:
June 2010: A mainline break in Mexico released more than 2.1 million gallons of untreated wastewater into the Tijuana River Valley.
March-April 2007: A ruptured pipe spewed 7.3 million gallons of sewage into the Buena Vista Lagoon.
November 2004 to November 2006: At least 14 million gallons of sewage flowed undetected from Navy barracks into San Diego Bay.
October 2004: Wastewater and debris clogged the Point Loma treatment plant, sending 2.26 million gallons of sewage into the ocean.
February 2004: A blocked sewer line in Balboa Park caused 4.9 million gallons of sewage to flow into San Diego Bay.
August 2003: A line break led to a 1.5 million-gallon spill at a treatment plant operated by Oceanside.
April 2003: A line break caused a 1.2 million-gallon spill in the Rainbow Municipal Water District.
February 2001: A clogged sewer line caused Mission Bay to become contaminated with about 1.5 million gallons of sewage that had overflowed into Tecolote Creek.
September 2000: About 2.7 million gallons of sewage spilled from a Camp Pendleton housing complex into the Santa Margarita River estuary.
February 2000: A clogged sewer line along Alvarado Creek went undetected for a week, allowing 34 million gallons of sewage to flow into the San Diego River.

Next Monthly Tijuana River Action Network Meeting

Next Monthly Tijuana River Action Network Meeting (every last Wednesday) - Wednesday June 30th at 6:00pm - Tijuana Estuary Training Center 301 Caspian Way, Imperial Beach, CA 91932.

Cross-border collaboration to address the conservation and restoration of the Tijuana River watershed by engaging in outreach, education, and being advocates for natural resources. Network meetings are a great way to meet and share ideas with staff and volunteers from Fundacion la Puerta, Proyecto Fronterizo, Fundacion Que Transforma, Alter Terra, Surfrider Foundation, Border Encuentro, Grupo Ecologista Tijuana, Tijuana Calidad de Vida, Tijuana Estuary, WiLDCOAST, Tijuana River Citizens’ Council and more. Volunteers and community members are welcome and encouraged to attend!

Visit the blog: http://tijuanariveractionnetwork.blogspot.com/

Environmental Issues Hurting Communities in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region

By Regina Ip
The United States and Mexico share a 2000-mile border where a population of 9 million is growing more than twice as fast as the populations of U.S. and Mexico.
Despite this growing population, the border region is confronted with many environmental health issues because of the lack of clean drinking water and proper health care. Even more, five out of the seven poorest communities in the country is in the border region. More than 35 percent of its population is living in poverty.
The living conditions in the area are in dire need of help. From weak social communities to inadequate building infrastructures, where there is no running water, sewage systems or electricity, the U.S.-Mexico border region faces many detrimental environmental health issues that cannot be fixed with the shortage of health care professionals or the stigma associated with the area.
“Almost everywhere you go in this world, there are people or groups of people that experience environmental injustices,” Paula Stigler said. “They are often low-income and people of color who do not have a voice and therefore are exposed unjustly to contamination in both their community and their workplaces.”
Stigler, who is the environmental program manager and tribal liaison for The San Diego Foundation, has been working on environmental issues, like water monitoring, with indigenous communities in San Diego County and Mexico for about ten years.
She has worked with various people including tribal health community promoters in remote tribal communities in Baja CA Mexico, local San Diego tribal environmental programs, communities in Cañon de los Laureles (Goat Canyon) in Tijuana and elsewhere.
Currently, Stigler is earning her doctorate in global health at UCSD/SDSU. She is currently interested in studying how climate change and its policies will affect susceptible populations in the border region.
The severity of the environmental health problems parallels those found in Third World countries. In addition to the underrepresented communities in the border region, many other residents are living in poor conditions. In some cases, there is no clean water for food, like drinking and cooking, or for hygienic purposes like bathing and washing. Even more, there is no basic sewage system to maintain wastes.
Because of this, residents have a much higher chance of catching waterborne and infectious diseases, such as salmonella infections, mosquito-transmitted malaria, measles and tuberculosis. Considered as a place where many people from different countries pass through often, about an average of 1.6 million per day, the health of those living in the border region confronts a national concern.
According to Stigler, some of the border cities do not follow safe air standards. Hazardous waste is a big problem as the border region becomes more industrialized.
New River, which runs down the inland region of Southern California, is the most polluted river in the United States. It has more than 100 industrial chemicals and 76 million liters of raw sewage passes through the river each day.
The rate of tuberculosis is twice the national rate. The rate of Hepatitis A is three times the rate of United States’ and two times the rate of Mexico’s. Salmonella and shigella dysentary is four times the rate of U.S. and Mexico.
Stigler develops workshops and speaks at community meetings on how residents can protect themselves from harmful contaminants in drinking water and in the environment. At these workshops, she calls attention to problems like poor drinking water.
“When looking at exposure to poor drinking water, it’s often a concern for waterborne pathogens and dehydration from gastrointestinal problems,” Stigler said. “This is especially problematic for children and the elderly. Since environmental health deals with so many different issues [like] air, trash, food, water, there are many health concerns [such as] cancer from exposure to dangerous chemicals, asthma from poor air quality [and] lead poisoning from exposure to lead in homes.
Stigler said that the current methods to solve the problem of poor water resources are not enough.
“Drinking water infrastructure was brought to communities in Mexico, however after assessing the decrease in gastrointestinal problems within the communities, my research found that the water was still contaminated due to unsafe storage practices in the homes and a lack of disinfection in the system.”
Stigler has formed the Tribal Environmental Health Collaborative, which is made up of tribal representatives, tribal NGO’s and universities that are assessing the top priorities for tribes in San Diego on environmental health and also trying to find funding to address their problems.
She said that, with the San Diego tribal environmental health collaborative project (TEHC), it’s difficult to measure the success of the drinking water infrastructure.
In addition, there is the issue of cultural competence in environmental health initiatives.
With the services that help tackle the issue, there are cultural conflicts in language and views on how to interpret natural elements, like water, which is considered sacred and represents nature.
“Cultural conflicts arise often due to a misunderstanding of how different communities and governments operate. When working binational there are language and communication barriers as well as cultural differences that can make the work challenging,” Stigler said.
“One thing I noticed was that while in the US we are accustomed to accomplishing many tasks via email and non-personal contact, in many other communities the face-to-face method is obligatory and works best for them,” Stigler said. One aspect of the language barrier involves the different approaches to communication that make it difficult to maintain regular contact. “Recognizing this is critical to having successful projects.”
Besides the language barriers, Stigler also comes across other communication challenges because of what technologies are used to communicate and how the political hierarchies work in the community. Understanding and respecting tribal sovereignty is very important.
“Politics is always an issue. Communication is probably the second biggest issue whether it be that calling internationally is not always easy or the same language isn’t spoken is a huge challenge.” Stigler said. “Also, a lack of understanding about the issues, the politics around those issues and no resources to address the problems. Many people are stretched so thin in addressing these problems and the resources are so slim that it can be really difficult to keep projects going.”
Despite the cultural challenges, the attempts to address and solve the environmental health issues have made some impact.
“Many tribes are now more aware of health and environmental concerns and beginning to address them through their tribal governments, which is a huge step in the right direction.”
Stigler will continue to work as a program manager to bring environmental awareness to local tribes.
“I hope to continue to work with non-profits who are fighting environmental injustices in our region and globally,” she said.
Those who are interested in helping can volunteer or donate to numerous organizations who are working on the issues, such as Environmental Health Coalition and the Native American Environmental Protection Coalition.
“There are many projects and groups that advocate for environmental injustices. I have worked with the US and Mexican governments both to help bring clean drinking water to communities in Mexico and have also received funding from foundations to organize tribes to assess and advocate for addressing environmental health priorities in their communities.”
Regina Ip is a public information intern with the Comprehensive Research Center in Health Disparities (CRCHD) and is majoring in Communications and Biology at UC San Diego. The CRCHD is a partnership of organizations focusing on community health and health disparities research. This publication was supported by the UC San Diego Comprehensive Research Center in Health Disparities Grant # 5 P60 MD000220 from the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, National Institutes of Health.