SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — The beach city of Imperial Beach can be a draw for some.
“To be a part of a small funky beach town, and the only thing funky about IB these days is the air,” Lance Rogers, Imperial Beach Resident & Business Owner, said.
People who live here have been telling 10News this for a while.
“In the last 24 to 36 months, it’s pretty unbearable. It started with not being able to go in the water, not being able to walk on the sand. And then the smell, it just produces headaches and choric cough,” Marvel Harrison, Imperial Beach Resident, said.
10News has been following through on the raw sewage and trash flowing from Mexico in the Tijuana River Valley, its impacts and what’s being done to fix it for years.
“My personal goal - it’s not a promise but a goal - is to get those beaches by next summer,” Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner of USIBWC said.
On Thursday, the USIBWC and local congressional leaders announced that a$42 million contract has been awarded to expand and fix the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in the South Bay, with hopes of reducing the prominent problem.
“It’s 20 months of design and five years of construction,” Giner said.
Giner said there are different reasons and parts for that timeline.
“Because we have to keep our wastewater treatment plant operating, it’s our rehab that’s very complicated because we have to keep it operating. And we have to double the capacity of the size of our plant,” Giner said.
But she says how long it takes could shrink depending on the design of the plant project.
Given the project's timetable, 10News asked Giner if the smell that the South Bay is dealing with will still be in the air.
“The source of the smell comes from multiple issues. One is related to the flows in the river. The other thing is related to sediment that’s coming across and the canyons. We are working on those issues with Mexico, pressing them to do the improvements on their side quicker and short-term improvements so there aren’t flows in the canyons,” Giner said. “Again, we shouldn’t be having flows. It’s been that way before. We should be able to get there again. And so, I don’t think the smells are going to continue for seven years smells stop once we get flows out of the canyons flows out of the river. “
Giner says she’s committed to finding a short-term fix for the smell and pollution. But when those could come is unknown as she waits to learn more from her counterparts in Mexico.
“So those have to, I have to, those answers need to come from Mexico. Right? And so I have not gotten those answers from Mexico. But, I’m working actively to get those answers from Mexico,” Giner said.
