Environment Report: Supervisor, Mayor Want Superfund Site in South Bay

The solution du jour in the ongoing saga of “How Do We Solve the Tijuana River Pollution Crisis” is to designate six miles of the river estuary on the U.S. side as a Superfund site. 

Those who know the nation’s Superfund program think of Love Canal in Niagara Falls which chemical companies used as a hazardous waste dump, on top of which people later built homes and an elementary school. In Niagara Falls, odor complaints triggered groundwater contamination investigations and then-President Jimmy Carter ordered an emergency cleanup and relocation of nearby residents. That was the birth of Superfund, the idea being that the feds step in where abandoned contamination threatens communities. Then they attempt to bill companies or parties responsible for the cost of cleanup.  

San Diego Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer and Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre want a Superfund designation for the lower half of the Tijuana River Valley closest to the U.S.-Mexico Border.  

They believe it would unlock more federal money to clean up decades of sewage and other pollutants spilling into the river, soil and as new research uncovered – the air.  

Aguirre sent a request to the Biden Administration in September and Lawson-Remer plans to seek the board’s approval on Tuesday to petition the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to add the Tijuana River to the Superfund site list.  

“If the feds continue to refuse to declare a state of emergency in the Tijuana River Valley, at least we’d be starting the process to designate it as a Superfund site. It’s the next best option to getting necessary resources that are desperately needed to remediate the issue,” Aguirre told me.  

If the county votes to petition the EPA on Tuesday, the county’s chief administrative officer would start gathering testimony from impacted residents and businesses to bolster their case. If EPA officials agreed to look into it, they’d start with a desk review of everything anyone ever wrote about contamination there. Only after that would EPA officials decide whether it was worth doing their own testing of the landscape. Then South Bay would still need the state of California’s buy-in. The state would need to pay 10 percent of the clean-up costs and assume full responsibility of the site after 10 years. So far, Gov. Gavin Newsom has yet to side with local officials that the cross-border pollution crisis is an official emergency, the quickest way, some believe, to summon fast federal funding. 

But EPA officials could decide that Superfund isn’t the best track for the Tijuana River Valley before their investigation began. 

The pollution at the border is basically a plumbing problem. Surging population growth and aging infrastructure in Tijuana are the main reasons why pollution spills into the Tijuana River and subsequently into San Diego. Money fixes plumbing problems, but it takes huge political will and acts by Congress to truly secure any major funding for this perpetual crisis.  

The river doesn’t just carry sewage (but mostly.) Piecemeal reports showed other bad stuff, like banned cleaner byproducts, metals and plastics chemicals making their way into the waters.  

As dirty as the Tijuana River Valley appears to be, it’s tough to get on that Superfund list. The fact that the contamination is coming from another country (Mexico) further muddies its prospects. Usually, Superfund sites target domestic pollution from known sources, sources that the federal government can then hold accountable for cleanup. Officials at EPA call it, “the program of last resort.”  

A report from Lawson-Remer’s office pointed to a Superfund site on the cross-border Columbia River tainted by industrial waste from a smelter in British Columbia in the 1990s. The EPA secured a $170 million settlement agreement from Teck metals company to cleanup affected land. But, as of March 2024, its designation as a Superfund site and access to more federal money to speed-up the cleanup is still uncertain.  

With funding at a trickle from Washington D.C., the greatest effect of Aguirre and now Lawson-Remer’s recent actions may be simply to elevate urgency. Going the route of Superfund may not be much quicker.  

Around 1,400 sites across the country are on the EPA’s Superfund list. Twenty-two percent of Americans live within three miles of these super-contaminated sites. The EPA once raised money for these forced cleanups through taxes on petroleum or other chemicals. But the petroleum tax went bye-bye in 1995, and Superfund cleanups lagged. President Biden reinstated the tax in 2022. But years of underfunding left Superfund in a less-than-super state.  

Still, Lawson-Remer is hopeful San Diego County could score some of the new money Biden’s tax would generate.  

A battery recycler in Los Angeles spewed brain-damaging lead dust onto 10,0000 nearby properties for decades. It is just now on the verge of making the list, according to reporting from the Los Angeles Times. It took federal and state lawmakers like Sen. Alex Padilla and the late Dianne Feinstein two years advocating for listing it after the recycler went bankrupt, and over $750 million in state funds could only clean up half the affected properties.   

In Other News: 

• On Wednesday, I’ll host a conversation with Los Angeles Times Reporter Rosanna Xia about sea level rise reporting in her new book, California Against the Sea, on Oct. 9 at 7 p.m. at the Book Catapult. Be there.  

• I talked with KPBS Midday Edition last week about the state attorney general’s lawsuit for allegedly lying about the recyclability of its plastic products, State Sen. Catherine Blakespear’s new-and-improved plastic bag ban, and the unfortunate reality that few municipal and private composters will actually take purportedly compostable bags.  
• Escondido City Council will consider whether to pass an “urgent” ban on new large battery storage systems in the city. This comes after the City Council passed a resolution declaring that these systems were risky and brought no economic value to the community last month. Then, an SDG&E battery storage site caught fire.

• This Los Angeles Times story unveiled how women in their second trimester of pregnancy exposed to some forms of air pollution (mainly those that come from tailpipes) were four times more likely to experience depression after delivery.  

• A new state law protects the free rambling of mountain lions or other wildlife in California. (LA Times) 

• The San Diego Public Library is training a legion of guerilla native seed bombers at a Nov. 22 workshop. The aim – to spread seeds that help California’s native ecosystems. Sign up to join the crusade on their website linked above.  

• Dengue fever – a viral illness spread by mosquitoes typically in South America – turned up in San Diego County recently. The county sprayed the neighborhood of the affected person in eastern Escondido. (Union-Tribune) 

• Carlsbad beaches get a fresh coat of sand this winter following the dredging of Agua Hedionda Lagoon, an action delayed by difficulties getting permits. (Union-Tribune) 

• San Elijo State Beach, a popular ocean cliffside campground, continues to crumble into the sea. But State Parks officials hope the California Coastal Commission will greenlight some repairs and additional rock walls to try and stop its demise. (Union-Tribune)