Last May, the San Diego County Public Health Department started using more sensitive technology to detect how much and how often sewage is spilling from Tijuana onto southern San Diego’s beaches.
The answer: It’s spilling most of the time, making the water way more polluted than we knew it to be.
After more sensitive water quality tests rolled out last May, the rate at which South Bay failed it skyrocketed.
At first, the county started closing beaches that failed the new test, which counts poo bacteria by its DNA. That triggered outrage from Coronado Mayor Richard bailey fearing his city’s coastline would be closed through the summer tourist season.
As political pressure mounted, the county changed how it communicated sewage pollution to the public. After July 1 of last year, a failed water quality test alone wouldn’t close a beach.
The result seems antithetical: We know the water is dirtier and more often, but the county closed the beaches less often.
But the sewage spilling into the ocean from Tijuana doesn’t strike all beaches the same way. Thanks to the ocean’s size, swell and currents, sewage dilutes and dissipates as it makes its way north toward San Diego.
A deeper analysis of the data, with the help of a researcher from University of California-San Diego, helped us map 17 months’ worth of water quality tests. We averaged thousands of results over that time period to get a better picture of how dirty the water is at each beach most of the time.
The Tijuana River, which carries sewage from inner-city Tijuana, empties at the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge. Sewage concentrations are highest here – often 35 times dirtier than what’s considered safe for human contact.
Jody Harwood at the University of South Florida’s Water Institute said that’s like swimming in a “mixed up turd in a bucket.”
At Coronado’s city beaches, the water quality typically gets better as ocean currents sweep the sewage north and spread it out. Still the water off Coronado, more often than not, is slightly over what’s considered safe.
Did you visit one of these beaches recently? Our researcher threw all the new water quality data on a map. Users can explore bacterial levels at all of San Diego’s beaches over the last 17 months.
Check it out here. For best results, view on a computer.
GIS analysis by Alexander Pourfard
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Can you correct the name of the reserve please?
Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve
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Here……. https://ImpotantOnlinedata.blogspot.com
Despicable! More wasted words and graphs in this article. No action by the Federal Gov’t, Politicians, or Environmentalists. This natural disaster perpetrated (on purpose) on the locals and visitors to the South Bay is beyond criminal.
Easy fix… FEMA could easily step in, declare a State of Natural Disaster Emergency, and repair the two treatment stations that are currently not working. The problem would be solved if anyone with the power had any cojones. As an ocean and animal lover and faithful tax-paying citizen, I’m officially done with the hypocrites.