SAN YSIDRO (KGTV) — In an app on his phone, Cesar Rosales is able to track the air quality inside his San Ysidro home. It's connected to his air purifier and shows a significant improvement in the last few weeks.
"What have you noticed over the last three weeks in terms of the smell?"
"A remarkable decline in how much it is in the night," Rosales said.
"It's not keeping you up at night anymore?"
"No and it's not waking me up in the morning either."
I met Rosales about a month ago, when county leaders gave him and around 400 others free air purifiers. The hope was to lessen the smell of sewage coming from from the Tijuana River. I followed through with Rosales on Wednesday, and he believes his purifier has been working.
"Has your mom benefited from having it in her room?"
"She's definitely less complaints about the smell, and had some issues with congestion and a lot of that is alleviated," Rosales said.
There are a few other recent developments that could have contributed to this. The International Boundary and Water Commission says that a pump station in Tijuana finally started working. Now, all three pumps at the Mexican PBCILA facility are moving millions of gallons of sewage away from the Tijuana River and into wastewater treatment plants.
"It's very exciting to be able to walk around at night. Just to have fresh air is nice."
On the U.S. side of things, the Hollister Pump Station has also been upgraded. The county says it's next step is infrastructure repairs at the South Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant. Rosales is cautiously optimistic things will continue to improve.
