Republican Supervisor Jim Desmond – who’s running for a critical U.S. House seat that could be key to flipping Congress – has been a little hard to follow when it comes to the sewage-plagued, cross-border Tijuana River.
Earlier this month he supported his Democratic colleagues, Supervisors Paloma Aguirre and Terra Lawson-Remer, in spending $1.8 million of county reserve money to study the feasibility of capturing and cleaning the entire river, as it flows out Mexico. This plan would also make the county, as opposed to the state or feds, responsible for cleaning the river.
That plan would ultimately be very costly. And it could only happen if voters approve a half-cent sales tax slated for the November ballot. The Aguirre/Lawson-Remer team is banking on the potential tax money (as much as $80 million a year) to secure a billion-dollar bond (essentially, a loan) for the county to build a river diversion system, which captures and treats the whole river.
Supervisors say that, if the county doesn’t clean the river, no one will. It’s the river that delivers millions of gallons of contaminated water daily to the Pacific Ocean and slops against the shores of Imperial Beach and Coronado.
“We’re not going to wait for Mexico,” Aguirre has said.
Desmond supported the feasibility study, but he is against the sales tax – the very thing that could fund the project for certain. (Again, if voters agree.)
Desmond has spent more time reminding voters that our fingers should be pointed at Mexico and the city of Tijuana. With its broken pipes and unconnected toilets, that city is the source of all the contamination.
“Putting money toward exploring constructing a new treatment plant to capture untreated river flows is a good source of reserve dollars,” Desmond said before the September 1 Board of Supervisors vote on the reserve dollars. “But we cannot let up the pressure on Mexico.”
I asked Desmond’s team how he can support the river diversion project when he’s opposed to the source of the funding. And because he is, how he proposes paying for that river treatment if not through the sales tax.
Miles Himmel, Desmond’s spokesperson, didn’t answer that specifically.
Instead Himmel said Demond has supported “air filters for families living with this everyday and exploring a treatment plant for the untreated river flows.”
“What he has said consistently is that those are relief, not a fix, and the fix runs through Mexico,” Himmel wrote Monday. “Until Mexico is held accountable, nothing built on this side of the border solves it. That is why this problem has gone unsolved for decades.”
President Donald Trump endorsed Desmond’s run for the 48th Congressional District seat back in April. He’s running against San Diego City Councilmember Marni Von Wilpert, a Democrat who could flip a seat long held by Republicans.
Desmond has applauded the Trump Administration’s efforts to put more pressure on Mexico as it relates to the Tijuana River sewage problem. The administration signed a new international agreement that essentially continued work begun under the Biden Administration to commit Mexico and the U.S. to fixing pipes, pumps and other broken, aging infrastructure that allows sewage to spill across the border.
It’s not like Mexico hasn’t done anything.
The country put its military in charge of reconstructing a large sewage treatment plant on the Baja California coast where Tijuana sends some of its sewage so it doesn’t cross the border. The new plant, completed in May of 2025, treats 18 million gallons of wastewater from central Tijuana per day and dispenses it into the ocean, according to this website created by the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency that negotiates between the U.S. and Mexico on water projects.
Mexico has also rebuilt 13,225 feet of new parallel gravity lines between the border and that plant, which is good because those lines snapped years ago and sent a bunch of sewage into the U.S. Mexico has also built a new pipe that helps take water out of the river and sends it to a treatment plant on the U.S. side. That was also reportedly completed in May of 2025.
There’s still a lot of work to be done. And Tijuana a lot of things on its plate. For instance, thousands of Tijuanenses lost both their access to power and water for a full afternoon and through the night during the heat wave last week. Think about that.
In Other News
- Carlsbad declared a state of emergency after unstable coastal bluffs triggered cracks in pavement along a stretch of Carlsbad Boulevard. (ABC 10)
- San Diego city councilmembers called on the state to restore local control over autonomous vehicles in the wake of the Waymo invasion. (NBC 7)
- Remember “flex alerts?” Neither did I until I saw this story reminding me that California’s electric grid controller used to issue them during heat waves. The alerts were supposed to encourage Californians to conserve energy to help avoid blackouts. The state hasn’t had to do that since 2022. Why, you ask? Because of all the battery back-up power the state has installed. Pretty cool. (ABC 7)
- The U.S. Navy is banning personal air conditioning units in barracks as temperatures soared last week because its aging buildings can’t support the power demands of those units, reports Andrew Dyer. (KPBS)
- The San Diego Zoo inherited and is caring for sixty lizards, four pit vipers and a crocodile found tied up in pillowcases inside a vehicle at the San Ysidro Port of Entry. (San Diego Zoo)
- The heat wave coursing through our part of the Pacific Ocean right now due to El Nino is delivering rare marine life appearances, like this whale shark seen off Malibu and this magical video of a flying fish caught by a whale watching boat in San Diego.
- State officials aren’t certain what contaminants Chollas Creek carries through its surrounding communities. But the California Department of Toxic Substances Control ordered Magellan Aerospace and Market Creek Plaza to clean up some contamination that reportedly contained cancer-causing toxins. (inewsource)
- We’ve heard of the Tijuana River sewage crisis, but the New River crisis? Tammy Murga explores how this river becomes heavily polluted by agricultural runoff. (KPBS)
- An Imperial County judge halted the development of a large data center complex in the area and ordered officials to analyze its potential environmental impacts. (KPBS)
