A message from the mayor | Notice

May 8, 2024 – Update on the cross-border pollution crisis

Dear residents of Imperial Beach and the South Bay, I want to reassure you of the City of Imperial Beach’s commitment to fighting for better monitoring and protection of the environment and public health.

I recently traveled to Washington, DC to meet with the Center for Diseases Control (CDC) and members of the White House to demand not only solutions to the failing sewer infrastructure causing our cross-border pollution emergency, but also to request direct intervention from the CDC to increase public health surveillance given the dire and prolonged conditions experienced by all residents, businesses, workers and visitors in the South Bay region due to unmitigated cross-border pollution, including including illnesses and strong nighttime sewage odors that we have endured for far too long.

The CDC has explained that the California Department of Public Health and the County Department of Public Health must make a public health request to the CDC because they are the agencies responsible for protecting the well-being of our community. Currently, the county public health department only tracks specific types of gastrointestinal illnesses and associated hospitalizations and has not yet made any requests to the California Department of Public Health or the CDC.

In response to the above, the City of Imperial Beach established a task force comprised of leading public and environmental health researchers from San Diego State University’s School of Public Health, Scripps Institution of Oceanography and doctors who are seeing a significant increase in illnesses. which can be attributed to wastewater and other pollutants to help better understand the airways of these pollutants and the interventions required. We are working with Vice President Lawson Remer to ensure the county public health department participates in these studies and advocates for our efforts to provide healthy conditions for ALL individuals in the area.

The City of Imperial Beach will actively work through this task force to present these findings to the State and County and advocate for much stronger protection of the public and environmental health of our communities in South Bay, especially for the immunocompromised, elderly and elderly. children. I will continue to fight for increased funding to accelerate the rehabilitation and expansion of the International Wastewater Treatment Plant, ensure that the Punta Bandera plant is replaced by this fall, and that the state of emergency be declared.

Flight. 40, n° 21 – Thursday May 23, 2024