Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped a confusing press release Thursday that made it seem like the Tijuana River sewage crisis was getting $46 million in state funding.
Media outlets nationwide jumped on the news. Except that wasn’t the case at all.
Newsom was merely announcing that the State Water Resources Control Board was now accepting applications for a piece of a $46 million pot designated to help clean up contaminated cross-border rivers. The Tijuana River isn’t the only cross-border river with a problem.
The New River flows into the United States from the Mexicali Valley and empties agricultural runoff, industrial and urban waste into the land-locked and highly polluted Salton Sea in Imperial Valley. It arguably suffered contamination just as long if not longer than the Tijuana River.
But Newsom’s press release prominently highlighted the Tijuana River in a jab at President Donald Trump’s administration.
“People in San Diego County shouldn’t have to worry about getting sick, losing access to their beaches, and living with polluted air. California has stepped up repeatedly, but we can’t solve a decades-long federal failure on our own,” a statement from Newsom reads. “The Trump administration must do its part, honor its commitments, and finally deliver the lasting solutions this community deserves, and they have a moral obligation to provide.”
The New River is mentioned much later and only briefly.
Representatives from the two river’s regions have been competing for this money for months, according to KPBS.
That $46 million comes from a $10 billion climate bond (known as Proposition 4) voters approved back in 2024. Former Imperial Beach Mayor and San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre has been fighting to win all of it for the Tijuana River.
She wants an immediate fix to a problematic point where the river passes underneath a road near Nestor. The river spills from pipes there where scientists and the county have recorded elevated levels of toxic sewer gas emanating from the churning water.
The project could cost up to $30 million, Aguirre spokesperson Diane Castaneda confirmed Friday.
But the mayor of Calexico hopes to win a large portion of that money to upgrade a wastewater treatment plant that discharges into the New River.