The Tijuana River sewage crisis has been raging for decades. It’s one of the most pressing environmental emergencies in the region. Southern California beaches are forced to close regularly due to pollution from the river, and Tijuana residents suffer the consequences of poor sewage and water infrastructure that puts their health at risk.
The U.S. and Mexico have a long history with this crisis that ultimately belongs to both countries. Our reporting series aims to reveal the root problems, possible solutions and the impact on the region’s land and people.
Documents show that two federal agencies have been at odds over the border wall project across the Tijuana River Valley since it was first announced in August of 2020.
Construction workers in Tijuana accidentally blew a hole in a major pipe transporting the city’s sewage to a wastewater plant along the coast last Friday. That means, once again, untreated sewage has been flowing into San Diego. While that wastewater plant, called San Antonio de los Buenos, is actually broken anyway, the rupture forced Tijuana…
Gov. Gavin Newsom this month vetoed a bill that would have sent $100 million to the state water resources, half of which would have gone toward cleaning up the pollution-blighted Tijuana River.
A repair gone wrong sent sewage that would normally flow to the troubled Punta Bandera plant and be pumped far out to sea spilling instead into the Tijuana River and threatening beaches on the U.S. side.
Today we’ll unpack the science behind a brand-new technology to measure water quality. San Diego is first in the world to use it, and it’s already sparked controversy. The more sensitive test shows there’s more poo plaguing San Diego’s southernmost beaches than we could ever tell before — especially in summer when coastal cities like…
Without a legislative fix, most of $300 million worth of projects to clean-up the polluted Tijuana River and Southern California beaches cannot be spent.
The drought is hitting northern Mexico so hard that the state of Baja will likely have to buy water from farmers in the agricultural region of Mexicali.
Maria Herrera had about a quarter left in her last five-gallon water jug. On that April afternoon, though, spotty water service returned to the 67-year-old woman’s apartment, before the jug emptied. If it hadn’t, that was all she had left to bathe, do housework or drink. Herrera lives in Villas de Santa Fe, a neighborhood…
Southern California lawmakers hope Gov. Gavin Newsom will put $100 million in next year’s budget to be split equally between the Tijuana River and the Mexicali-to-Salton-Sea-flowing New River, both sewage-plagued water bodies.
While San Diego waits for Congress to figure out how to get the border region its funding to build a bigger and better Tijuana sewage plant, the EPA and IBWC say they’ve found a path forward to avoid further delay.
The lawsuits alleged that the International Boundary and Water Commission violated the federal Clean Water Act by allowing millions of gallons of raw sewage, heavy metals and other contamination to spill into San Diego.
President Joe Biden’s fiscal 2023 budget proposal is in for a lot of slicing and dicing throughout the budget making process. It’s unclear whether the language San Diego needs will ultimately stick.
A giant pipe to the ocean is one of two main ways Tijuana sewage pollutes the coast. The other is the Tijuana River. These two spill points represent a choice regulators must make soon: Tackle the cause of the problem in Mexico, or its impacts in Southern California. Or somehow do both.
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San Diego 101: Know the Basics
San Diego 101 is a multimedia series from VOSD made to educate San Diegans about some of the most important issues that shape our region. These videos explain the basics of U.S.-Mexico border relations.
Thank You
This series is produced by Voice of San Diego in partnership with the Tijuanapress.com and with support from The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder and The Pulitzer Center. Our binational, bilingual reporting and photojournalism series illuminates longstanding environmental issues that severely impact quality of life along the border.