SAN YSIDRO, Calif. (KGTV) - Tens of thousands of gallons of sewage water spilled from a pump station in the South Bay earlier this week.
The United States International Water & Boundary Commission (USIBWC) said on Wednesday night a pressure valve malfunctioned at the Hollister Street Pumping Station, sending 30,000 gallons of water out on Hollister Street.
Crews were reported to have recovered 22,00 gallons from the spillage.
Frank Fisher, Chief Public Affairs with the USIBWC, said an investigation into what caused the valve to malfunction is underway.
However, they suspect sediment and trash caused the malfunction because crews pulled a piece of trash from the valve blockage.
The Hollister Street Pumping Station is out of service still as of Friday, and no date has been determined yet for when it will get up and running again.
The Smuggler's Gulch Canyon and Goat Canyon collectors were also shut off as a result.
ABC 10News met Baron Partlow, a resident of Imperial Beach and activist against the IB Sewage Crisis, at the Smuggler's Gulch Canyon Collector Friday.
Partlow explained how the sewage waters from Mexico first go through five canyon collectors like Smuggler's Gulch, which directs the transboundary flow to the Hollister Street Pumping Station. From there, the sewage water gets sent to a treatment plant.
However, when the pumping station is out of service, Partlow showed how the water leaks into the canyon which eventually funnels into the Tijuana River Valley.
"As you can smell, it's not a Coors light beer commercial. This is highly concentrated and highly toxic," Partlow said. "It impacts the Tijuana River Valley, and as you can see they closed off a lot of the trails. It closes our beaches, and it denies us access to the beach."
Partlow checks the river gauge logs daily, which monitors water flow, and comes out to the collectors often to see for himself what's going on.
"It gives us a reference as to what really needs to happen on the resident side because that's where we're at," Partlow said. "Obviously, it [affects] the horse ranchers, then there are the people of Coral Gate who are right on the doorstep of the sod farm, which due to the County not doing their dredging west of Dairy Mart, it floods out there. It's just a big mess."
Spill issues are nothing new for the pump station.
In June, ABC 10News reported around 300,000 gallons of wastewater spilled from the Hollister Street pump. In August of 2023, ABC 10News reported that 20,000 gallons of sewage spilled out. Then in November of 2023, ABC 10News reported that a new pump was set to be installed.
ABC 10News asked the USIBWC for some possible ideas or solutions to prevent future spillage, even relaying a couple of Partlow's requests for camera installations or a backup infrastructure that would prevent spillage from going into the river valley when pumps fail.
For now, Fisher said they're planning to install flow meters at all five canyon collectors so the public can see the flow data for themselves.
