Senate Standing Committee on Environmental Quality

In about 60 seconds, so if everybody could find a seat, that would be great.

All right. Good morning, everybody. This is the Senate Environmental Quality Committee and the Assembly Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials Committee on our joint legislative informational session. We are now coming to order. Good morning. And I would like to welcome you all to this joint hearing on the Tijuana River Valley.

I've just concluded my first year as Chair of the Senate Environmental Quality Committee, where our work brings the best available science to bear on the biggest environmental issues facing our state. California has long been a national leader in environmental stewardship and policymaking.

But what is happening in the Tijuana River Valley is an international, environmental disaster that undermines everything that California stands for. It's truly outrageous what is happening and it's due to its international nature. We know the Federal Government must take the lead.

Still, there is much that the state and local governments can do and that's what we're here today to talk about. Our hearing today has members from both houses and both parties of the Legislature, which speaks to the tremendous importance and the injustice of this ongoing pollution crisis.

The Tijuana River Valley has endured decades of environmental degradation due to trans boundary flows of untreated sewage originating from Tijuana. The sewage flowing into San Diego County's coastline is poisoning our air and water, harming public health, closing beaches, and killing marine life.

These vibrant ecosystems and communities that we all cherish are being bombarded by bacteria, viruses, and hazardous chemicals every day. It also undercuts our economy, hurting our region's thriving ocean focused and tourism industries. All of us must join together to tackle this regional problem and protect the families and residents of San Diego County.

Thank you, members, for gathering to hear important updates on this situation. I want to acknowledge the decades of tireless advocacy and work in this issue area.

At the state level, I'd like to acknowledge and thank my colleague who is en route, Senator Steve Padilla and Assemblymember Alvarez, for their years of diligent work and advocacy to push the state and Federal Governments to address this crisis and bring resources and relief to impacted constituents. Locally, communities closest to the border are hit the hardest and experience these impacts daily.

I am so devastated to hear stories of those living and working in the surrounding communities. The severe toll to the quality of life of those affected by the Tijuana River is awful and I'm sorry to those who are impacted. We're here today because of you.

I look forward to learning more about these challenges and the work that has been done within our communities and by local governments. Federally, we will continue to monitor and advocate for progress as the US EPA's Comprehensive Infrastructure Solution is implemented.

I know many of the big picture solutions rely on committed federal partners, but there are actions we can take today to help San Diegans right now. This environmental and public health crisis requires us to act urgently at all levels of government. So, this hearing will focus on localized efforts, impacts, and current needs.

We will hear from many dedicated individuals deeply involved in this issue, representing state and local agencies, academic institutions, and various organizations. I'm looking forward to learning from all of our speakers today and using what we learned to redouble our efforts at the state level to bring more attention, resources, and justice to the affected communities.

For our agenda today, we will have a few updates at some point from our U.S. Representative Mike Levin's office. We will also hear from the tireless champion, County Supervisor, Paloma Aguirre. Supervisor Aguirre is one of the most dedicated people working on this issue. She talks about it, she fights. She's been public about it for many, many years.

She will provide us with an overview of the crisis and share how San Diego County is working to identify and address community impacts. And following that, we will dive into scientific advancements that have enhanced public awareness and elevate public health concerns.

We will hear from Dr. Sarah Giddings and Dr. Kim Prather from the Scripps Institute of Oceanography on water quality modeling and air pollution originating from wastewater. And then, our next panel will focus on the impacts of the pollution. We'll have Dr. Paula Stigler Granados from San Diego State University speaking on public health impacts.

Serge De Dina with Wild Coast on environmental impacts. He's also the former Mayor of Imperial Beach and Crystal Irving from SEIU Local 221 on worker impacts. I want to thank our panelists for all being here today.

And our final panel will highlight updates from state and local agencies, including Chair Joaquin Esquivel with the State Water Board and Paula Forbis with the San Diego Air Pollution Control District. We'll then conclude this hearing with a public comment period.

We have a very full morning, so I'd like to extend the opportunity to the members who've joined us from the San Diego delegation for brief opening comments. And I want to thank my two colleagues who are here, Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, Assemblymember Tasha Boerner, and State Senator Brian Jones who are sitting here with me today.

And I will ask both of them if they would like to make opening remarks. And we'll start with Assemblymember Tasha Boerner.

Thank you, Senator Blakespear. We are so lucky to have you leading the Environmental Quality Committee in Sacramento and the Senate. You know, I don't think locally people realize how important this Committee is.

And I think hopefully people in the room today and watching online will see the important work that Senator Blakespear is doing in Sacramento and feel it at home. I'm Assemblymember Tasha Boerner. I represent Assembly District 77, which is Carlsbad, all the way downtown, downtown San Diego, Coronado.

They gave, the redistricting commission, gave me one of the most beautiful districts in the state, and they gave me the water off Imperial Beach. So, they gave me the sewage from Mexico.

And so, I think almost everybody in the state delegation, you can see it's the Assembly, you can see it's the Senate, you can see it's Republican, it's Democrat. We all are highly concerned with the impact of the Tijuana River sewage crisis. It's a complex issue and this crisis has been decades in the making.

And that's what I think we have to remember. I'm here on behalf of the Assembly, so you can imagine I look like Damon Connolly, who looks like a football player from Marin. And it's that force that we bring with us here today to address this important issue. It's cross jurisdictional, and we have all hands-on deck.

We have to continue to put pressure on the government to find solutions to the crisis and make sure we get all the funding we need as soon as possible. I want to thank our congressional delegation who have been diligent in fighting for this issue.

I want to thank the supervisor and Serge De Dina, who, when he was Mayor of IB, I think it's like a requirement to be Mayor of IB to fight for the Tijuana River sewage issue. They have been raising awareness alongside all of our community advocates. The community advocates have been sounding the alarm for decades.

They've been knowing that this is a problem and their work is what's culminating in us all being here today, sounding the alarm, figuring out how do we deal with this very, very complex cross border, cross jurisdictional issue, which is probably the largest environmental disaster in the United States.

And I was in Wyoming at the Council of State Governments and I was talking about it. And most people don't know because we're San Diego, because it's on the border of Mexico. It's like this corner of the country that people don't realize.

But if this happened anywhere else, people would be up in arms and it would be louder and there would be more money. So, I want to thank our congressional delegation because they've been excellent at fighting for this issue. And I think you see here with our state delegation that we're fighting for the issue.

The community advocates in the room are fighting for the issue. The scientists, everybody's working together. So, when we have government working together, we have exponential impacts in a positive direction. But we have to keep going because this hasn't been enough and it's not going to be enough unless we keep that momentum.

You know, when we, I got my start as a PTA mom in 2015. And so, when we look at the local studies that are pointing to the impact in children, that's when I think this is no longer an Imperial Beach issue. It's a Coronado issue. It's a San Diego issue. It's an issue about public health.

And so, I'm so grateful that the panel has a whole section on public health, because the health of our children—every single child in California deserves a shot at having a healthy, successful life. And it doesn't matter what zip code you're in; it doesn't matter what city you're in. And this crisis is unacceptable.

You know, the congressional delegation worked for $250 million to funding to repair and expand the South Bay International Water Treatment Plant. And those upgrades significantly reduced the flow into the ocean. But we've already seen an increase in sewage intake in that treatment plant.

And the EPA reports that it increased from 25 million gallons to 35 million gallons per day. And this year, the San Diego region was allocated $50 million from Prop 4. And I think there's more work we need to do on that in this coming legislative year from the climate bond. And these investments are crucial.

But I really am just grateful for the Senator for organizing it today, for everybody, for being here, and for us keeping the focus on this and taking it across the finish line. Because the next generation of San Diegans deserves something better than the current generation of San Diego.

Thank you so much for your remarks, Assemblymember Boerner. And now, we'll turn to Senator Jones. Would you like to make any introductory remarks?

I don't, as minority leader, I don't normally sit on committees, and I don't normally sit especially on the EQ Committee.

So, I'm—this is more of a listening and learning tour for me, and I'm hoping that I do a sufficient job filling in for my Republican colleagues that normally sit on this Committee. But since I represent a big part of San Diego County, and when I was in the Assembly, I represented part of the border, this is an issue that myself and my office have been paying attention to for a long time.

And as has been mentioned, this is decades that San Diego has been dealing with way back since Brian Bilbray was actually Mayor of Imperial Beach.

And so, we've got a long history of this being a San Diego issue, a California issue, and as Assemblymember Boerner said, a U.S. issue. And so, I'm looking forward to hearing from the panelists and listening and hoping that we can find some ways to work together on helping move this all forward.

Thank you very much, Senator Jones. And with that, we will welcome Senator Paloma Aguirre to provide an overview of this crisis and share county updates. Thank you again for joining us.

Not Senator yet, but thank you for the promotion.

I'm sorry, Supervisor, I apologize.

Thank you. I don't know about that. Well, first, I want to thank you, Senator Blakespear, so much, for committing this hearing. Assemblymember Boerner and Senator Jones, thank you for being here, too. And I want to thank everybody in the audience.

We have so many advocates and people who have been fighting for so long, especially my predecessor, Mayor Serge De Dina, who continues to fight through his nonprofit wall... All right, so we're going to get started. My name is Paloma Aguirre. I am the Chair Pro Tem of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors.

I've been in office since July 22d as Supervisor. Prior to that, I was the Mayor of Imperial Beach for two years. And prior to that, I was a Council Member for four years, one of the last at large Council Members representing the entire city. But I have been in this fight since well before that.

I've been in this fight since probably 2005. I was a—was a surfer? I'm still a surfer, but I was an Imperial Beach surfer. I haven't surfed in Imperial Beach since September 2021—was the last time I was able to surf there. But I used to surf in Imperial Beach.

And I didn't know that I had been surfing in polluted water for years until I saw a guy walking on the beach putting up Clean Water Now signs. And I asked him, why are you putting up signs? He said, well, don't you know you surf the most people polluted beach in America?

I said, no, I had no idea. And that person was Serge Sedina, who was already fighting on this issue. Since then, he said, well, you should come and volunteer for my organization, and that's how I began this journey.

And I began to understand how much of an environmental injustice this is and how ignored, how disinvested, how disenfranchised our South Bay communities have been on this issue, which is now, without a doubt, one of the biggest environmental and public health crises in the entire Western Hemisphere.

It is the biggest public health and environmental emergency in the Western Hemisphere, and I don't say that lightly. Our crisis has been compared to Flint, Michigan's lead poisoning of their drinking water. And we wish, we wish that this crisis included only one pollutant.

We have some of the leading experts on this issue, scientific experts in the room, that are going to cover this more in depth than I will. But this is not a statement that we take lightly. This crisis has been going on, as many of you know, for decades. I don't know. It's not working.

This crisis has been going on for decades and it's because of the shared nature of the Tijuana River watershed. It's the area highlighted in green.

Three quarters of it are in Mexico, one quarter in the US. The river itself meanders in and out of the border, but it takes the southern path, flows entirely through the city of Tijuana, flows north towards the Tijuana River Valley, and discharges south of Imperial beach through actually a federally protected estuary, one of the last remaining coastal wetlands in Southern California that hasn't been bisected by a freeway.

And through the State Marine Conservation Area, which is basically an MPA, they're known. It's part of a network of protected areas statewide that spans almost 500,000 acres, and it's an important corridor for marine mammals and it's incredibly important in the ecological connectivity of California and Baja California.

But unfortunately, the city of Tijuana has not been able to keep up with the infrastructure to service their population. They have also a unique type of stormwater and sewage infrastructure combined system.

So, the fact that that city sits, on average, 300ft above sea level, when it rains, all of that water drains down across the border into the Tijuana River Valley. And with it, it carries sewage, trash, tires, and many pollutants.

That I'm going to get into right now. So since 2018, over 200 billion gallons of sewage have crossed our border. That is a gigantic amount of sewage that you don't hear about anywhere else in our nation. When we hear about a 20,000 gallon spill, 100,000 gallon spill in LA, you know, everything stops and everybody freaks out.

But the reality is we are living consistently with this crisis on a daily basis. Our beaches have now been closed almost four years consecutively. On the right hand side of the slide, you'll see our Camp County LED SD Beach Info. It's a daily reporting system that alerts ocean users of the impacts of water quality.

On the left side of the slide, you'll see a permanent beach closure sign that has been there left over for the better part of the last four years. So this has devastating impacts on our local economy and our quality of life, not just of Imperial beach, but of the entire South Bay.

Because our beaches in Imperial beach in Coronado serve most of South San Diego. And it's been almost four years that people have been unable to access clean water. But what's incredibly concerning is the fact that this is now beyond a beach water quality area issue or crisis.

It is thanks of the work of scientists such as Dr. Prather and Dr. Granados and many other scientists that have been studying the effects of not just the water quality impacts on our coastline, but also the air quality impacts stemming from these flows that are not just polluted with residential waste water, but also with industrial wastewater.

And I'll get into that in a second. There we go. So you heard earlier, Senator Blakespear, talk about the congressional delegation securing almost $600 million.

You may have heard about this in the news, but $600 million have been secured and appropriated to expand and double the capacity of the international wastewater treatment plant, which is north of the border. It's a great example of binational cooperation that was funded by both nations, Mexico and the US.

It was built on US soil to treat wastewater from Mexico. So 100% of that wastewater that it treats is coming from Mexico, mostly from the western side of the city. All of their waste goes into a pipe into one of those pumps, and then under the border into the treatment plant.

That treatment plant, when we advocated to expand its capacity, there's a process called NEPA process, National Environmental Pollution Act Study, that they have to make an assessment of any infrastructure improvement project that the US Government will undertake. And what they found was that this plant had been in a total state of disrepair for years.

It was not meeting compliance. Well, I don't know if three years, but a few years. And it would need a significant amount of funding to fix it and double its capacity. So now it's finally on its way to being fixed and to be doubled in capacity. That's great.

Now, south of the border, on the left hand side of your screen, you'll see the San Antonio de Los Buenos treatment plant. That treatment plant had not been functioning for probably 15 years.

We had advocated for to at least two previous Governor administrations saying this is really an issue, this is an issue that is impacting our water quality during summer months. Because I forgot to mention something that's really key. The Tijuana river is a seasonal river. The Tijuana river should not be flowing year round.

It should only be flowing after a storm event. So technically there should be zero flow right now the river. Now in the dry weather or summer months, US surfers would see plumes come up the water and the smell. And we would say, well there's definitely sewage coming and impacting us.

We strongly suspected it was coming from this plant that was not really operational. And when we would test with an old type of water quality testing which is culture based. So basically you take a sample, you put it in a petri dish, you wait 24 hours for it to produce results.

So you would find out today that the water was polluted yesterday. So thanks to the work of many advocates, including myself, Wild Coast and others, we advocated at the state level many years ago. And now San Diego county has one of the most advanced beach water quality monitoring programs, programs in the nation.

It's based on DNA and it produces results in four to six hours.

Supervisor, I just like to make a few technical comments for all the people watching online. You could speak more into the microphone so everybody could hear you. And also if your slides don't move forward to say out loud next slide. Oh, thank you. So they can get it to move forward.

Thank you. That would be fantastic. So now we have one of the strongest beach water quality monitoring programs in the nation. Now we know that those impacts from this plant back when they weren't producing results, they are now producing results.

Now we know for a fact that we were getting polluted by that source and also from the Tijuana river itself. Now in 2022, Mexico and the US signed a binational agreement committing to putting funding US committed $300 million. Mexico committed $144 million.

And through that commitment, Mexico completely replaced that treatment plant of San Antonio de Los Buenos, which is now fully operational. So the issue is this, it's not treating enough sewage. So there's still sewage going into the ocean through that stream.

And as I mentioned, the Tijuana river is also polluting our air and beach because now it's flowing year round when it shouldn't. And the fact that it is flowing tells us that that is not stormwater, that is concentrated wastewater and industrial waste flowing on an annual year round basis.

Now Mexico, you'll see there where it says Tijuana river just below it, it says that is a pump station that Mexico has in place to divert the river when they can and they send it south through this creek down here. That operation of that pump station is inconsistent.

Sometimes it's turned on, which is I guess good because we'll get our pollution coming through the ocean. But when it's not turned on, all of that pollution is flowing through our South Bay communities. And that's what I'm going to explain further.

I just want to make a very clear point that neither the treatment plant on the US side and neither the treatment plan on the Mexican side is treating anything flowing through the river.

The river is the main source of pollution to all of us, and I mean all of us, because now there's evidence that some of that may make its way all the way to LA Jolla. Next slide.

So what's extremely concerning to us right now, and it is thanks to the efforts of Dr. Prather and Dr. Granados and their teams last year, we now understand that there is a hotspot, we call it the hotspot in the Tijuana River Valley.

And it is something that we can actually fix as soon as possible and the reason why there is a hot spot. So on the bottom right of your slide you'll see a satellite photo of where the river flows in the Tijuana River Valley. You'll see a white spot that's not snow, that's foam that's visible from space.

So if you ever have foam in any body of water, that is a really bad thing. That either means there's surfactants or chemicals or lots of things that should never be in a natural body of water.

So the fact that we have some man made infrastructure there, you'll see two of the four culverts on the left hand side here. They're basically pipes that were created to prevent flooding in the river valley and to allow the flow to go go under a road called Saturn Boulevard. Next slide.

If you click on the bottom left here, it's the video See if it shows. Yeah. On the left.

Yeah. So that's just the river. The fact that the water is being channeled through these four culverts is actually causing the river to accelerate and to become more, to have more turbulence. So it's basically causing the river to churn like a machine washer and creates even more foam. Next slide, next slide.

It's just a little bit of the same. You'll see well after rain and when it doesn't. This one. Yeah. Next slide. Oh, this is an image that I'm so grateful to Dr. Granados for convening. We had a special team.

Basically the top gun of the firefighter Department of Austin, Texas flew down here to take samples using drones because the conditions became so toxic for the scientists that they were unable to go out there and collect samples because they were getting sick. Press play on the bottom left.

That's Siren Boulevard. This is Tijuana River Valley. You can see the ocean in the far end. You can follow the line of trees. That's the river and that's see how the culverts are going under the road there to prevent flooding.

But it's actually creating a cascade effect that causes the water to churn and molecules and aerosols to just shoot out into the environment carrying microscopic but really bad levels of all the toxic soup that's present in the Tijuana River. Next slide.

So this is a photo of what we call the plume. When the river's flowing, you'll see the stain, the brown stain in the ocean. This is actually an old photo. I think this was taken by Wild Coast back in 2012. Now that plume makes its way well above, well beyond IB all the way to Coronado.

And Dr. Giddings is probably going to talk about this in their study, but one of the script studies did estimate that at least 34,000 illnesses have been attributed to water quality pollution in the South Bay beaches. Next slide.

Now, because of all of our advocacy efforts last year and all the media attention that we got because of the scientists working on this and thanks to the media for helping us highlight this crisis, we reached out to the Centers for Disease control. We took three trips to Washington D.C. in 2024.

In one of those visits, we went to the CDC asking for help. They finally agreed to come down and they did two studies. One was the ACE study. It was a chemical exposure study where they surveyed about 2,100 respondents.

And they found and in their self reporting surveys that everything that these surveys were producing as results coincided with what we as leaders in South Bay had been hearing for years, we had been hearing that people were getting sick without even going to the beach, without going into the water.

They were having gastrointestinal ailments, they were having chronic migraines, chronic, chronic sinusitis, allergies, asthma, upper and lower respiratory ailments, headaches, loss of work, anxiety.

And when the CDC came and took these surveys, they found that at least 64% reported new or worsening physical symptoms, high levels of anxiety, exactly what we were finding in anecdotal reports from our community, levels of depression.

But what's really key here is that 92% of the people who live, work and play in these areas did not feel safe. I just want to take a moment to reflect on that because what do you do when you have nowhere to go?

When you are a working family or a low income family, or a person on fixed income that receives Social Security security, that's elderly, that may have nobody left, how do they leave? You have no ways to leave your home. That's 12. You're being asked to leave your home.

How many people have not been forced to leave and move out of their city? They love the community they belong to and kids have to be separated from their schools or from their friends. This has a very significant impact on the mental wellness of our community as well. And that's what this survey found too. Next slide.

And then CDC has another form of assessment. It's called a community assessment for public emergency response, or casper, where it's basically they come into an affected community, they take a snapshot. They surveyed us, a number of respondents, that survey found very similar findings. 70% report disruptions in their life. You know, 63% found that they had emotional distress.

Very similar results on the health symptoms or ailments as well. So it was really important to the community to feel validated. Even though many of us were, you know, right there with community saying, we hear you, we understand you, we're fighting with you.

It's important for community to have this validation from an established agency that is in charge of protecting our health. Now I'm going to go back to the hotspot because it's a very important issue and opportunity for us, especially as it relates to this discussion.

So those photos and videos that I showed you are within less than 2 miles of 11 schools. That's incredibly concerning. You see that green spot? That's Barrie Elementary. That's literally like two blocks or three blocks down from where we are seeing this hotspot take place. There's Southwest High, Nestor Language Academy, Mendoza.

There's Central Elementary, Southwest High and Mar Vista High School. And these are just the schools. There's a number of daycares, there's a number of, you know, businesses where people go and have to work on a daily basis. Next slide. So one of the things.

And my colleagues, Dr. Prather and Dr. Vernados are going to elaborate a lot more, more and a lot better on this. But I just wanted to quickly mention those of us who live in the affected areas and by affected areas, I would say it's probably anywhere south of Barrio Logan.

We, anecdotally, we hear these reports all the time that as soon as you pass Barrio Logan, start coming into National City. There are days where you can actually smell. Hydrogen sulfide is a very specific type of smell. It's a rotten egg smell. I'm pretty sure all of you have experienced it.

If you've ever gone to a porta potty or, you know, to a farm, you can, you can smell hydrogen sulfide. Well, last year the scientists found that we had days where they, we had spikes of levels of hydrogen sulfide of almost 4,500 parts per billion.

And what is that number as it relates to what we, you know, what agencies and entities, institutions determine to be safe? The state standard of exposure for nuisance is 30. So that's over 100 times higher than what our state levels are determined to be, to be able to just have a regular quality of life. Next slide.

What's really concerning and where we need a lot more information on is okay, so we have this standard, 30 parts per billion. It's called the air quality ambient standard, where anything above 30 parts per billion, you'll smell rotten eggs. Anything below that, you probably won't. That's the standard that we have.

And then there's a really high standard that's for wastewater treatment workers. They're constantly exposed to this stuff. Their standards are a lot, the thresholds are higher because they're going to be exposed to that. They say, well, you can only be exposed to 10 part, 10 parts per million on one shift, 8 hour shift per day.

So that's just all it's telling you is like, yeah, you may be exposed to this higher level, but it's better that you don't get exposed to it more than once in a day. Well, this is the amount of hours that we have been exposed to hydrogen sulfide on a daily basis.

There's been days that almost the entire day we've had levels well above state standards. And what is the long term chronic health effect of long term exposure to not just hydrogen sulfide? And I want to make a real clear point on this. Hydrogen sulfide is what we can perceive.

It's a toxic gas we can smell, but there's even more toxic gases that have no odor that we are also being constantly exposed to. And the doctors will touch on that more in depth. But that's what keeps me up at night. Next slide. So what are we doing about this at the county?

We've already started as soon as they got elected July 22. The Chair, Tara Lawson Reamer, who represents this area, and I have formed a Subcommitee. We have public health experts, county staff. We've brought on board a hydrogen sulfide expert, Dr. Michael Bates from UC Berkeley, and we're working on bringing recommendations to the board. Next slide.

We immediately, within two weeks of me taking office, something that we've been advocating for probably over a decade is warning signs.

Because every time we would go visit the scientists at the hotspot or go, you know, take tours for the media, our elected officials, we would see dozens of people just jogging, walking their dogs right next to the hotspot. We would talk to them and they would say, my eyes are watery, my throat is burning.

I don't know why. We're like, well, because you're literally walking right by one of the most polluted areas in the nation. So that's one of the first things we did. We put up warning signs to alert recreational users in the Tijuana River Valley that they could potentially be exposed to some of these toxic pollutants.

Now we're also working in partnership with the Air Pollution Control District. And thank you for being here, Ms. Forbis. I was going to call you doctor. Are you a doctor too? No. No. Okay. So they've been spearheading the air purifier program for the last year. We're almost at the mark of 10,000. I think we're short 20.

But we've been doing and ramping up efforts to distribute filters. 10,000 does not even begin to cover the need. The number of households that we have estimated are affected by this are at least 40,000 households.

And according to the California Department of Public Health, to prevent exposure, long term health, chronic exposure to hydrogen sulfide and other toxics that we can perceive, there should be at least one air filter per room.

And that is even especially true for low income working families in South Bay, where we have a lot more multigenerational families living under one roof. So our push something that I'm working on diligently are on is ensuring that we expand that number from 10,000 to 40,000. And actually today at 2pm we have our APC.

I'm on the board of APCD. We're going to have that conversation and that's a huge area of opportunity for complimentary funding from our state delegation where we could have some help helping us at least get some temporary relief. Let me just be very clear.

Air purifiers are not the solution, but it's an important preventative measure to at least keep people healthy, have people be able to breathe clean air while we continue to work towards more permanent solutions. Next slide. The county is also working on an epidemiological study. As I mentioned, a lot more needs to happen.

The studies that have happened have been self reporting surveys where you respond if you've had XYZ symptoms or quality of life impacts.

What we're working on is how are we going to take real hard medical data and follow a cohort of people that may live in this environment so that we can better understand what exactly is happening in their bodies? What is it exactly happening to kids and seniors? Is it in their bloodstream? Is it affecting them developmentally?

We know that children have a very high need for oxygenation in their blood as their bodies are developing physically. And we know that some of these toxic gases may hinder oxygen distribution in human systems. So is that having a developmental effect on children? That's what we're going to dig into. We're putting skin in the game.

That's something that I said I would do from day one. You know, it's going to come at a pretty significant cost, but the county is going to pursue that because that will help us know exactly how we need to intervene and what types of interventions we need. Next slide. Oh yeah. So I just said this.

We're going to do these. These are the recommendations we're going to bring forward on the types of studies. We're going to do a retrospective one. Basically we'll take one person and ask them about, you know, their ailments in the last year. All of who lives here in the South Bay see a show of hands.

How many of you have been sick? Yeah. All right. Many of us who live down there have been one time or another to the doctor or the urgent care or emergency room. All right, next slide. Yes. Another thing that we are pursuing is support, state support for a soil testing.

There's been a lot of data collected about scientists, soil, water, air. But government needs to come in and do their own testing as well. We know that there's some state funding that's available for this. We need to know what are the legacy effects on the soil. This has been happening for decades.

We know that there's the potential of accumulation in the sediment and soil of all these pollutants. We need to better understand how that's impacting our environment and our ecology. Next slide. Economic impact study. That's incredibly important. That's something that we have been advocating for a long time because all we have is anecdotal data.

We know that since our beaches have been closed, we have had a severe decrease in visitors and tourism in South Bay, specifically in Imperial Beach. We want to better understand what are the ramifications and implications of these beach closures and of quote, unquote, the reputation, if you will, of the South Bay about this crisis. Next slide. Yes.

And what's most important, going back to the hotspot that I talked about earlier, we need to figure out how to remove that hotspot because that's a low hanging fruit that we don't need to depend on the Federal Government to fix. That's within city of San Diego and counties jurisdiction.

We're working with the city of San Diego, we're working with our partners Senator Padilla and Assemblymember Alvarez. The county's putting skin in the game by we will have the feasibility analysis completed by January and that will give us the map of what exactly we're going to need and how much it's going to cost. Next slide.

And just to finish on that thought. So as was mentioned earlier, the climate bond which was Prop 4 was passed by the voters of the state of California. It is thanks to our local representatives, Senator Steve Padilla and Assemblymember David Alvarez, that they ensured that that bond had specific language to call out cross border rivers.

$50 million of that Prop 4 bond were allocated for cross border rivers. Now we are all making sure that that funding makes it our way so that we can remove that hotspot immediately because that will significantly begin to mitigate and diminish the exposure of all these children and elderly people that are living in the South Bay.

So how else can a state participate? We need obviously interagency coordination. That's something that we are working constantly toward. Something I didn't mention, but I will. It's important.

Part of my 5.0 sewage plan when I first got elected that was unanimously approved by the Board of Supervisors includes creating the position of a sewage crisis at the county.

That person will be not on the legislative office, district side, it will be part of the enterprise and that person will dedicate the entire time to all of these efforts and hopefully even help lead them. Right.

If we have a full time person dedicated to just this issue, they can help coordinate forums, meetings and efforts at all levels of government, including advocates. And then. Next slide. So yes, that's my call to action is the immediate needs are twofold. It's removal of the hotspot.

We just need that money to come down and help us remove it. And then the expansion of the air purifier program. So the remaining 30,000 households who have yet to receive an air filter and have yet to be able to breathe clean air overnight gets one because they're not cheap. Next slide. Next slide.

Said that these are just some of the other funding needs. Equally important, of course, sediment dredging, trash fumes, cleanup, environmental preservation are all incredibly important. But obviously public health and the health well being of humans is paramount. Next slide.

Our kids who have not been able to go to the beach and some of them in their entire lifetime have known nothing else but their beach is closed. So with that, I'll end and open it up to questions.

Thank you so much for that comprehensive introduction. You did a really great job and it's clear how much time you've spent on this and your passion and that was very well organized and easy to understand. So thank you very much.

As frequently happens with panels, we're already behind, so we're going to go to Senator Padilla to make his remarks and then we'll need to move on to our first panelists. But we hope you're able to stay as long as possible. And thank you again, Supervisor. So Senator Padilla will turn it over to you.

All right. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

And first, I want to thank you very much for your leadership in convening this panel and including some of us from throughout the region and in a very distinguished group of witnesses that I know I've had the pleasure to learn from and work with for a long time on this issue, which is multidimensional and complex and perplexing.

So appreciate your leadership here and I appreciate your leadership as a chair of eq. I think it's beneficial to all of us. I want to thank Supervisor Aguirre too. Was really glad to see some. You know, you have been a champion and a leader.

It is clearly reflected on the trust people in certainly South County have put in you to be our county supervisor because you've been a relentless champion on this issue and I have such great respect for that work and I know we're going to continue working closely together.

And I appreciate the fact that you included some of the informed potential mapping and steps as a result of the epidemiological study and also some cost quantifications. I know we're having ongoing conversations directly about some of the potential funding from Prop 4 with respect to certainly dealing with mitigating the hotspot.

So thank you for your work and we're going to continue with working.

And Madam Chair, just to say briefly, I mean, as you can see, you know, knowledge is power and I was happy to work in last session to help get some of these studies funded through the legislative budget process because the more that we learn, the more we realize that this is not.

This is an issue that can affect hundreds of thousands of people. It can affect young children's neurological development, it can affect the learning environment, it can affect our economy, never mind the public health impacts on the health side, but also the health cost side.

This is one of the most acute and unique environmental, environmental justice and public health crises, I would argue, in all of North America. It is one that is underappreciated, to be frank, simply because of where it is occurring.

And I know that my distinguished colleagues here who've joined in the given great support and have heard me say this, and I think the supervisors say this, if this were occurring somewhere else in our state, I think the lens on this would have been sadly different.

But I really appreciate all of our colleagues throughout the region lifting this issue up and making it front and center. Because knowledge is power. When we understand what we're confronting, we can map out specific steps to mitigate and protect people's well being and public health and our environmental resources.

So with that, Madam Chair, thank you very much again for including me. Hello. Thank you very much for those comments. We would now like to invite forward and you may sit over here. Kyle Crayhill from Supervisor or from Congressman Mike Levin's office is going to provide a few remarks.

Thank you, Senator. Assembly Members, thank you for having me. I'm here on behalf of Congress Members Juan Vargas, Scott Peters, Mike Levin and Sarah Jacobs and I have been authorized to deliver the following statement on their behalf.

We appreciate the California State Senate Environmental Quality Committee's continued engagement on the urgent issue of cross border sewage and pollution affecting the Tijuana River Valley and surrounding communities. For years we have worked to bring national attention to this crisis and to highlight its devastating impacts on the environment and public health.

Together, our Congressional delegation has secured more than $650 million in federal funding through the United States Mexico Canada Agreement, the Border Water Infrastructure Program and multiple disaster relief packages. These investments support cleanup efforts and critical infrastructure, including doubling the treatment capacity and repairing essential systems at the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.

We have also introduced legislation such as HR 4357, which would establish federal watershed management and infrastructure programs, as well as HR 1948, which would strengthen funding authority for the IBWC, the International Boundary and Water Commission.

Additionally, we have urged the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate health impacts, pressed the Environmental Protection Agency to expand air quality monitoring in South Bay communities, and called for greater accountability from the Mexican government from the Mexican government on its wastewater treatment commitments.

We have further advocated for declaring a federal state of emergency to unlock urgently needed resources Resources Our delegation has brought former EPA Administrator Michael Regan and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Verma to the region for on the ground tours and discussions and we continue to work closely with the IBWC and other Federal agencies to strengthen public notification and improve transparency and accountability.

We look forward to working with all of our state and local colleagues to finally fix this once and for all. Thank you.

Thank you very much for your comments and next I would like to welcome Vice Chancellor Meena Wadhwa, Director of Scripps Institute of Oceanography to share a few words and introduce our next speakers.

Thank you Chair Blakespear and honorable Members of State Legislature. My name is Meena Wadhwa and I'm Director of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences here at UC San Diego. Thank you all for being here today.

It is an honor to host today's critically important discussion to help better understand and address long standing issue of cross border pollination sorry, cross border pollution that impact San Diego south county communities.

At Scripps, our mission is to advance scientific understanding of our oceans, coasts and climate and to help decision makers like yourselves leverage that understanding into informed solutions that protect communities and ecosystems.

For over 20 years, Scripps Oceanography has been working with Imperial beach and Tijuana River Valley stakeholders and community Members to investigate cross border pollution, transport behavior and impacts. Dr. Sarah Giddings and Dr. Kimberly Prather will share key highlights from their body of work which has significantly advanced our understanding of pollutant behavior, transport and impact.

Dr. Sarah Giddings here serves as an Associate professor and Coastal Physical oceanographer specializing in estuarine and coastal processes with an interest in interdisciplinary projects that address how physics impacts biological and chemical processes in the coastal environment.

Her presentation will cover the pathogen forecast model that Scripps developed for South County and Northern Baja beach communities which helps lower swimmer illness risk while validating water quality infrastructure improvements.

This innovative five day water quality forecast tool received critical, critical funding support from state legislatures, thanks to Senator Steve Padilla and his leadership and the state San Diego state delegation. So thank you very much, Senator Padilla.

Dr. Kimberly Prather is a distinguished professor and Distinguished Chair in Atmospheric Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and at Scripps Oceanography. She serves as the founding Director of the NSF center for Aerosol Impacts on the Chemistry of Environment and NSF center for Chemical Innovation.

She also co directs the UC San Diego Airborne Institute which brings together an interdisciplinary team of scientists focused on understanding the impact of climate change on the air we breathe and on developing implementable solutions to improve air quality globally.

Her presentation will shed critical light on the aerosolization process of waterborne pollution pollutants, their profiles and transport into the atmosphere. I'd like to thank Congressman Levin and his office for their continued interest in this important work and for supporting our efforts to elevate it with key federal audiences.

So with that I'll turn the floor over to Dr. Giddings.

Thank you very much. All right, so I'm going to be talking about sort of our scientific advancements in understanding and now being able to predict coastal water quality.

And I'm going to focus on the water side of things and then I'll pass it off to Kim to focus on the air side. And again, thanks to Senator Steve Padilla and the San Diego State delegation for getting funding to support this advanced forecasting capability which is really state of the art.

So we saw a diagram sort of like this from Supervisor Aguirre and I just wanted to highlight.

I think if you say next slide, it might help do it faster.

So I just want to point out these aerial images which both come from Wild coast that show these two main point sources.

And the key thing is that the water is coming into, of course, the estuary. You saw the hot spot which is inside of the estuary. As they reach the ocean, they're going directly into the surf zone.

That's really important because there's key dynamics within the surf zone that alter the transport, but also lead to another potential source of aerosolization. So we know a lot about surf zone transport already.

We know that currents can be driven because of wave breaking and you can get currents in the surf zone that are much larger than outside of the surf zone. The image on the right is from a dye studies, we released a non toxic dye near Imperial beach and tracked it from the air.

That's dye concentration within the surf zone. We had a strong south swell and that drove the dye to the north very rapidly, while over deeper water, the shelf, it went to the south.

And so if you're just looking at what's going on offshore, you might not get the correct picture what's happening in the surf zone where swimmers are going to be directly in contact and where you may have aerosolization of the pollutants.

The other thing that we know about surf zone transport is that waves can actually trap things inside of the surf zone. And you can see that nicely on the top image of another dye release. Where the dye is being trapped inside. Of the surf zone. And that means less dilution and more direct exposure.

Pertinent for this cross border region is sort of our overall conditions. And this was already discussed earlier. But in the summer we have a typical conditions of south swell that drives this northward transport within the surf zone and the opposite happens in the winter.

So we got to a point where we had a really good understanding of the science, but we wanted to be able to predict this and have a tool to be able to look at this more carefully. And so we have developed a hydrodynamic realistic numerical model. You can think of this like a weather model.

In order to get to the spatial resolution that we need to, we start at a very large scale. And then our smallest scale is shown on the right. Our grid boxes are resolving down to less than 10 meters horizontal resolution. This has never been done before in this type of realistic model. And everything forcing it is realistic.

Tides, river flow, air heating and cooling, etc. And what we do with this, what this does for us is it gives us the output of the currents, the salinity, the temperature, and we add to it dye tracer.

Just like we did dye in the real world, we do a numerical dye and that dye represents the concentration of wastewater. And so we're able to track these pollutants from these two major point sources. This is a video showing the top is, what I'm going to focus on is the surface fields.

From the left, the sea surface height, sorry, the wave height and direction, surface temperature and velocity, surface salinity and then those two main point sources that we're concerned about in terms of pollution.

What we've done with this model is we have, and supervisor Aguirre discussed this, we have connected this to now think about specifics of norovirus and human health. So We've taken it beyond just the physics and connected it to a human health model.

And we were able to show, we did an analysis for the EPA to look at potential infrastructure solutions. This was done several years ago and we showed that you're going to have the largest reduction in beach closures if you tackle the Punta Bandera site.

And that is in part amongst a lot of other work from people in this room, what led to the recent reoperation of the San Antonio de los Buenos treatment facility. But as super Supervisor Aguirre pointed out, that is not treating the full capacity. So the problem is not fixed.

We still have wastewater coming into the ocean and so we have turned this into now a forecast model. So this is just like your weather model, where in a weather model you're going to be looking at what's the air temperature, what is going on with the strength of the winds.

In my region, this is doing the same thing for the ocean. And so what is the strength of the currents, what is the salinity, what is the temperature of the ocean and what is the wastewater concentration? You can see the website up there. I did a little screen grab so that you can see what's in it.

You can select from a location and it's predicting five days into the future. You can see the wastewater concentration here on the map. You can zoom in and out on the map. And I recommend anybody go to look at this. It's a really useful tool.

We saw it as a way to both sort of reach out to communities that are potentially affected and give them a tool to decide if they want to go swimming or not, but also to help with people who are making decisions on the ground. So this is this tool that you're welcome to go access.

And again, it's five day forecasts updated continuously. State of the art simulations. How do we know that it's working? So as was mentioned, the San Diego county has a very state of the art measurement system that's going on and we are working closely with them.

So we have on the X axis here are the county DDPCR and terracaccus measurements. And on the Y axis is the concentration of sewage from our model. And you see that there's a nice linear relationship. That's nice to see. And then we wanted to know, well, can we actually sort of predict beach closures based on this?

So our website has these three colors, low risk, moderate risk and high risk. And they're based on a wastewater cutoff. This vertical, line is the cutoff after which the beaches are closed. So if the beach measures entericach is larger than this, the beach is closed.

And that corresponds actually really nicely to our transition between low and moderate risk. And so if you look at this diagram, we have some regions where we have false positives in our model and some where we have false negatives. Overall, over this time period, which is January through the end of November, we have 72% accuracy.

During certain times of year, we actually get even better than that. But it's still not perfect. I mean, it's a model, it's never perfect. And so we are working to further improve this model to have it be an even more accurate resource for people. And how are we doing that? With additional observations.

So to build something like this, you have to understand the physics, you have to understand the circulation, you have to understand the biogeochemistry really well to be able to build it. And then you have to keep measuring it to be able to make sure that you are representing reality well.

So the observational data, I'm just going to show two examples. This is from a real time mooring that is deployed off, right off the end of the Imperial beach pier. I pulled this off the web a few days ago.

So it has time series of temperature at two heights in the water column on the top panel and then the water velocity where red is moving to the north on the bottom panel.

We also, if we zoom in, are doing a bunch of water quality samples and actually measuring norovirus specifically, as that's one of the main causes for gastrointestinal illnesses. And we have a whole group of large team of people working on this, trying to further advance our understanding and get these measurements to help constrain these models.

So there's a full list here. This is in collaboration with a bunch of folks here, San Diego State. We also have collaborations with folks in Mexico as well. And so we're working on getting to a point where we can get this model to even better than 72%.

Skill. So, we're going to pause. We're going to do questions at the end. So, I'm going to pass it over to Dr. Kim Prather.

Okay. Well, good morning and thank you for the invitation to share our latest research on the air, which you've heard a little bit about, and I'll give you a little bit more context, and I'll also provide the latest results that we have down in the area, in terms of air. So, you've heard a lot about this.

I get to sort of go through here. We're short on time, so I will sort of fly through the introduction. But one of the things I want to make a point of is that before we sort of got into this, there was, as you heard, a lot of interest in what happens when you go in the water.

And the point is, your number one exposure route to pollution is through the air. You inhale 11,000 liters of air a day, 22,000 breaths, versus a couple of liters of water, and you usually filter your water before you drink it.

So, we really were interested in the air, but people hadn't really made the connection, hadn't really thought about what if it gets out? And that's what I've spent my entire career doing, is looking at what gets out of polluted water.

So, one thing I also want to point out is it was also very noticeable to me that when the water was polluted or the beaches were polluted, you can close the beach, but you can't tell people not to breathe. And so, you know, basically, we really needed to understand this problem.

We started in 2017, piggybacked on our project with Sarah Giddings and her team. Looking at that dye, we asked, can that dye get into the air? And the answer is yes. When it gets trapped in the surf zone, those waves break, you see the spray.

And that can contain viruses and bacteria and all other types of chemical pollutants, as we've since shown. We've shown that up to three quarters of the bacteria you breathe in the air down there come directly from that polluted river. And so, in September 2024, we pivoted. And that's what I want to talk about today.

This picture you've already seen. And actually, Ramon is here. He's famous. Yeah. And so, we were excited to see this because it was notable how it felt like this problem was being suppressed. And I started working with, at the time, Mayor Aguirre, and it was just—we were very excited.

Remember when we had LA times finally come, because people just weren't talking about, I mean, some people were. Joe Little's been doing it for a long time. But what we did was we always were looking at the wet season because that's when you can get over a billion gallons of river flow. A billion gallons in one day.

And we hadn't thought about the dry season too much. But in summer of 2024, people started squawking really loud, really, really loud, like louder than normal. And so, we decided to go down in what's called the dry season. There should be no river. It's not a river. It's flowing wastewater, pure flowing wastewater. It's not diluted by rain.

And so, I refuse to call it a river. But at the time we got there, it was 40 to 80 million gallons per day. Now, imagine if you had broken sewage pipe flowing through LA with that kind of weather, right? It wouldn't last.

And this is what people were experiencing and they were being told, don't worry about it, odor's a nuisance. You know, it was, they were, they were desperate when we got there and so we had to pivot. Aerosols, which I study, I've spent my whole career studying, they don't smell, but gases do.

And as was mentioned, hydrogen sulfide is one of the stinkiest ones. And it's a good thing it's stinky because it chases you away in a weird way to say that, but that's the truth. So, what were the gases? Well, we first started at the bottom left hand corner. We started sampling. We have a mobile lab.

We're going here for year after year. And we went to the coast because we've always looked at the beach, we've always looked at the coastal air. And the community came to us and said, why are you there? The smell is over here. And so, that's how we infamously discovered the hot spot, which is shown here.

And the closest community where we put our mobile lab is Nestor. Okay, so the values that we're reporting that I'm going to talk about today are all in Nestor, which is about a half a mile from this river hotspot.

And so, you know, this is, it's really, you know, I will tell you, we showed, it was shown earlier, and I'll show the levels were, you know, over 4,000 PPB. At the river, you could easily measure 20,000 PPB. I mean, ridiculously high quantities at the river. It just disappears very fast.

This gas, luckily, is very reactive and so it disappears very fast. So, the values of all we're talking about are in this community. What is the community being exposed to? So, we went out there. We were shocked, and we saw these nighttime spikes that Supervisor Aguirre has already shown.

And we tried to tell people, the right people, we thought, and they wouldn't do anything. So, this isn't like PTSD. But Mayor Aguirre, thank God, she is a relentless warrior. She said, well, I innocently went along with it. She said, let's hold a press conference. And I was like, okay, I've never done one of those before.

Holy moly. It's been a wild ride is what I will say. So, that's me, obviously, and Ramon's in the picture again. You always get photo, photobomber. And you know, I got there, I was shocked. Like, I thought, oh, there'll be a few people. I got there and there was all kinds of news people.

And I was like, oh, what have I gotten myself into? And so, that was September 9th, 2024. And they were—we were told there was nothing, nothing we can do. You know, these levels are high. It's a problem. In fact, there was a press conference held right after ours saying the air is not toxic.

So, the community was really up in arms at this point. And so, our theory, at the time, this has been talked about was that this was because of the turbulence in the river. It was not the entire river. It was one spot. And this had never been shown anywhere in the entire world before.

No one had thought of this. And so, if our theory is correct, if our hypothesis is correct, that it's the turbulence in the river that's causing this hydrogen sulfide to peak every single night, what would happen if they stopped the river? Which they did. And I couldn't have paid somebody to do this wonderful atmospheric chemistry experiment.

And so, the next day, they diverted the river with that pump, the PB Sila, they turned it on, which means they kept the sewage on the other side of the border. So, what do you think happened? You already got a peek, but I'll show you. That's what happened. Immediately, the hydrogen sulfide levels, and as has been pointed out, thousands of other gases dropped.

The odor went way down. It was noticeable. It was a huge effect. And so, we published this paper in August in Science, which was sort of the gold standard, but we had a lot of pushback. People wanted to discredit our measurements.

It was, you know, it's a story in and of itself. This is my favorite figure of my entire 33-year career. This shows the H2S, the hydrogen sulfide levels, compared to the APCD complaints or odor reports that were coming in. So, we plotted the number of odor complaints each day, which got over 200.

So, it reached a high, high level. And the correlation is 0.92 between the measurements and the people. So, the people were the canaries in the coal mine. They were better sensors than our fancy expensive systems. And so, a perfect correlation would be one. I mean, you don't see this for atmospheric measurements. You really, really don't.

So, this was probably a really good point, a little bit disturbing. But the community was, we were told, be careful, you're going to scare the community. The community wasn't scared. The community was scared by being told there's nothing wrong, by being gaslit. There's no other way to say it, but they were basically, they were relieved.

And I have to tell you, you know, air purifiers are a good thing. They do. We should all have air purifiers in our houses. And so, there is a solution to fix this, especially when you spend 90% of your time indoors. Point I want to make, because we've been fixating so much on hydrogen sulfide.

And I'll show the update on that. The latest, greatest data. The blue is the flow. And we've looked at all the gases. We did—I don't know how many measurements. We have so many measurements all across the valley. And what you see is that when the river was diverted, the blue line goes down. So do, so do, so do what we call VOCs, volatile organic carbon compounds.

These are all the other gases. They don't go away and they stay up and they don't smell as much, which is good and bad because I stand by the river—some of us will go to the river today.

And I get a headache that can last for a couple days still. And so, it doesn't—not having hydrogen sulfide kind of lets you kind of hang out. And so, what are those other gases? We think those are more related to the industrial waste that, that Supervisor Aguirre talked about. And we're sorting that out right now.

All right. So, you are the first all to see these data. This is the longest time series of hydrogen sulfide gas. Never thought I'd be so excited by data, but anywhere in the world, ever. Okay. And you're the first people to see this. So, you see out front, like here, this is, this was the bad period and then the river diversion, and then this is the next 15 months, and you can see that it has gone down.

But what are the typical urban levels of hydrogen sulfide gas? Less than 1 PPB. So, you can't even—I mean, these are all above that, right?

And so, in there, all those spikes, as I show up, I label above, all these spikes are—every one of those spikes is nighttime. So, that's when they're dumping something in the river and the flows are high, and then they turn those off. So, there's things happening. Here's compared to the standards.

And I heard that Senator Padilla would want to talk about standards today, so, I put this in. Basically, this is comparing all the different—it's really confusing. What is too much? Well, depends on who you ask. And so, CARB, as was mentioned, has a 30 PPB standard. OE—OEHHA—has a chronic. This is not acute.

This is not gonna knock you over like right now, but it's over time. If you're breathing over 7.3 PPB, that's not good. Every day, that's what people are breathing. EPA is even lower. This is over your lifetime if you're breathing over 1.4 PPB. So, make your choice.

So, I'm gonna report, for the first time, our values over the last year, because I should mention the 7.3 is chronic. So, that's the average overall time over the whole year. And so, what you see is we are above. This is after the river diversion. This is the last 12 months, because it's technically a year.

The point I want to make also is nighttimes are higher, well above. Daytimes are lower. And this points out why the air purifiers are so important, because those nighttimes are when you're in your house trying to sleep. And they do work and everyone—and by the way, you drop flu and influenza and all the other airborne illnesses that you can get by cleaning your indoor air.

I mean, everybody should have clean indoor air. And so, but particular here, there's special filters they're giving out that take out these toxic gases. I want to point out, we've now detected.

We've identified over 8,000 other gases coming out of that river. And so, some of them track H2S; some of them are more prevalent during the day. We have our hands full in sorting this out. One point I want to make talking about standards, because I know this is being talked about quite a bit.

This is our data in real time in H2S. And you see this huge spike, this is how fast we can analyze. Really, really fast. And so, what you see is a massive spike at night. And this is the waves that everybody talks about that lives there. They'll use, you just—it's air, so one second, you can be breathing ridiculously high levels, and the next second you're not breathing any.

And so, the point I want to make is that this is the hourly average that everybody converts their data to, including Air Pollution Control District, because it's the standard.

What you see is when you convert it to an hour, suddenly, you know, you're below the threshold of notifying people. But your body cares about those short spikes. And so, we really need to think this through. I just want to highlight something that just started working two days ago. This is our newest greatest sampler. It's the fastest sampler.

Hardest part about the air is there's not that much there in general. And this is for the aerosols. This is the pathogens, the viruses, the bacteria. You can see that basically, normally, we have to sample—sometimes we have to sample for like 12 hours to get enough stuff to see what's there chemically and biologically.

This thing will give us, in one minute of air, is equivalent to sampling for 12 hours. So, we're going to be moving through the valley in an EV, trying to sample and see what people are being exposed to more. So, our paper—this is the paper that was published. Very proud of these signs.

Now, they're like the beach signs for the water. Now we got air signs. I don't know of anywhere else in the world. So, congratulations, Supervisor Aguirre, for doing this. This has all happened—the coordination, even though it started out a little rocky, has been great. And so, we were all working together to try and make it better.

I'll just finish with some remaining questions, and then I need to finish. But these are airborne phage. Those are usually—those have never, as far as I know, been detected in any environment, air environment, that's not a wastewater treatment plant.

So, I say that when we look at health effects, we need to look at what wastewater treatment plant workers are experiencing. We have mobile measurements of all these gases. And so, we're teasing through that. This is methane, thiol, another sulfur compound. And you can see we've mapped out all the way up to La Jolla.

We're trying to figure out the health effects. You know, basically there's just a lot of other questions that we're going after. We're going after that foam that was mentioned. It's a lot of PFAS and forever chemicals and metals. So, we're trying to get that. Trying to tease out what the maquiladoras. You hear, keep hearing, Mexican sewage.

But there's a lot of industry on the other side that's putting stuff in. And so, what, what, what is that? And a lot of those are, I have to say, US manufacturing. So, we need to think about it, and everybody needs to own this problem and nobody should be breathing this air at all.

So, you know what, when we look at H2S, even when I gave you that standard, what does that mean? I don't know, because you're breathing so much other stuff. So, what are the health effects of breathing it? So, we're doing things like we're taking like lung organoids, which are cells like your lung, and exposing them to the water in the air, and they don't like it.

We dilute it way down. And so, we're trying different procedures because nobody ever thought about this connection for some reason between water and air pollution. I won't go into this, but for those, I think there might be some in the audience, we collected dust in homes because that's one of the best ways to find out what people are exposed to.

It's an integrated sample. This is the maps of all the homes. We also surveyed the people that live in those homes. So, we're flying through this analysis as fast as we can.

And I just want to thank the team. It's a large team. San Diego State, as you'll hear from Paula, was also involved. This was—we had NSF funding, but Scott Peters came through and helped us get more NOAA funding, which allowed us to pivot and do the gases.

And then, I'm just gonna finish up, leave you with this slide, which some of us will get to go see. But, yeah, get to go see, and get to go see. There's no smell on this slide, unfortunately. But anyway, I'll stop there. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. That was really interesting. We're going to do two quick questions before we move on to the second panel, but we're going to start. Do you have a very quick question?

Yes.

Okay, go ahead, Senator Jones.

Thank you. You both did a great job. Fantastic. You actually scared the hell out of me. But also made it interesting at the same time. Yeah. Quick question is you mentioned several times in your presentation that you've raised this as a concern, and they say it's not a problem.

They have assured us that everything's okay. Who is the they?

It was her predecessor. It was public. It was—there's a changeover. The good news is the ones that are in place right now are not saying that anymore. Let's just stick with that. So, we have a much better working relationship with everybody right now.

At first, there's this is—I talked to people who discovered sort of Flint, Michigan crisis. This is the standard reaction. Right? We showed something inconvenient truth that nobody wanted to see. So, it's a pretty standard knee jerk reaction. We showed something that was very inconvenient because now you see it, now you have to do something about it.

Right? And so, we made people uncomfortable and that's how they react. But now, it settled down and we work really, we're working really well with everybody.

Okay, thank you. Is that quick enough?

That was perfect. Senator Padilla.

Not Senator proof. Thank you very much, Dr. Prather, as always, and Dr... thank you so much. And Dr. Prather, what, what I really respect about you is what we just witnessed a second ago. You are relentless and unafraid to speak truth to power.

And when people's lives and health are at risk, the last damn thing we need are people worrying about being afraid to tell the truth. And your research here is empowering. And I'll be quick because I know the Chair wants to move on, but it seems to me, and I want to be corrected, I know, sort of indirectly addressed, we've had an issue with the standing ambient air quality standards that CARB that haven't been updated since I think 1982.

We look at the context of what we're understanding here, but not just the hydrogen sulfide, H2S itself, but some of the appurtenant other things that kind of flags for us. Right?

We look at those increases that you showed in the chart. Anything else you want to expound on the lack of that standard? Because I will infer and I, and I'm working with the Chair here, and have invited her to do that. And I know and all of my colleagues, I would do that as we're—my office is looking at introducing legislation to make these standards be readdressed and updated in a modern context.

That said, we don't have all those answers. So, anything you can add additionally to that might be helpful both to our office, this panel, and the folks that are here.

Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one. I mean, in general, the federal standard is the national ambient, the NAAQ Standard, National Ambient Air Quality Standard, hasn't been upgraded. There's like seven things that you monitor and that's it. And these are new. And you're hearing more and more about emerging chemical threats or emerging.

You know, these are all coming out because of the wildfires, because of the urban fires. We just have so many gases. And I can't tell you how many emails and calls I get, is the air safe to breathe? And I don't know how to answer that question, right? And so, we have to start going after this.

You know, the epidemiology is different things, but it's like, it's statewide, it's country, it's worldwide. Because of all the pollution we have and the changing climate that we have, the air is completely different now than it was when these standards were made. And so, how to address that is a tough one.

The first thing we're trying to do, as scientists, is just figure out what is there. And then, we're also working with medical field. One of the things we want to do, for example, down this particular problem is just the people, right? Go get blood samples, go get swabs. What's physically in people?

They're ready, you know, they want, like, why is nobody trying to figure out what we're being exposed to? So, we need to jump into that for this problem. But it's a problem everyone, including at the federal level, is having to address because there's just—you can't hide pollution anymore.

If it's not in the water, it's in the air or the soil, it just moves around. And so, yeah, it's like a game of whack a mole.

Well, thank you so much for your powerful testimonies and presentation.

Thank you.

We'll move on to the next panel now, and we will invite up Dr. Paula Stigler Granados, followed by Serge Dedina as well as Crystal Irving. You're welcome to sit up here if you'd like to.

Okay, this is a hard one to follow. Not good news. I have more scary stuff. So just to prepare everyone, not meant to scare people, but we're going to talk more about the public health impacts of what's been going on. You heard quite a bit from our colleague Dr. Prather, and thank you so much. Just walked out.

She did an amazing job of sharing what we've been seeing. And you can see here, this is some of the footage that we've been taking while we're in the field. As scientists doing this work, I lead an amazing team researching environmental health. My background is public health, public health science, environmental health sciences.

And so I'm going to start off with just a little bit of a reminder of what the supervisor already told us. We've got several surveys that we've been pulling from the CDC surveys. Our institute also has an ongoing longitudinal survey right now. And I have to say, it just keeps saying the same thing over and over again.

These are not complaints. This is data from rigorous community health surveys. And you've seen these numbers already. I want to call out something that's interesting, is that we've heard all these stories about chronic headaches, sleep disturbances, children waking up sick in the middle of the night, keeping parents up worrying about their children.

And as a reminder, I think one of the important things that's been coming out of this is that these odors and issues are happening a lot at night when we have these discharges into the river and, and sleep, as we all know, is very important. I don't know how many of you didn't get much last night.

That was me. I did not get much sleep thinking about this a lot. But it's critical for overall well being. And poor sleep has definitely been linked to increased risks of disease and things like cardiovascular complications. So this is a very important issue. This is systematic exposure affecting an entire community.

And so these are families in our communities who can't escape this contamination through behavior change alone. As you've already seen from Dr. Prather's information, there's a lot of these odors that are happening at night. So I'm kind of calling this a nighttime crisis. But this doesn't just happen at night.

It just so happens that a lot of these large spikes are happening in the evening hours. This chart just shows some of the data that I calculated from the APCD data in our Nestor community that residents are most frequently exposed to these hydrogen sulfide smells that we're talking about. This is close to the Saturn Boulevard.

This is the Berry elementary monitors that are up there. These elevated levels often begin by 7pm when children are at their sporting events trying to be practicing outside, families are eating dinner, children are playing in their neighborhoods and suddenly they have to go indoors.

So this is also impacting the ability of our families to go out and exercise, to be doing the things that they really want to do. I heard lots of moms telling me about baseball events. They have to cancel in the middle of the game to go inside because the smells get so bad.

So this is chronic exposure affecting daily life. On average, over the past year, residents were exposed to pollutants. According to these calculations, about one in six nighttime hours. If you use these, these chronic exposure limits of the OEHA numbers of seven or more parts per billion.

So hydrogen sulfide though is not the only pollutant, as you heard from Dr. Prather, being tracked. Many others are present and many of them are also odorless. And so this is that timeline that you've sort of seen already that shows you where that red line is, that 30 parts per billion.

And the other one is the 7 parts per billion threshold. This is that year long data, this is the APCD data from the Nestor site. And so it's a little bit different. Dr. Prather has some really incredible instrumentation. So I think that these levels could be even higher than what you're seeing here.

But this shows a pattern over nearly a year. As you've already seen, those spikes represent exposure events. And this chronic exposure threshold that's recommended for, we have for long term health protection is probably not even low enough. And so just as a reminder that this has been going on not just this last year, but for years.

And so residents really don't have a warning system. These harmful chemicals in this mixture are often odorless. This is just the ones that we can smell. And they're exposed to other things like industrial chemicals, pesticides and, and other gases again that they can't smell. This is again an ongoing chronic exposure, not a one time event.

You've seen this picture already, but this is really how that foam becomes aerosolized. This is wastewater at Saturn Boulevard. Some of you are going to be going there today, I think is that today please wear your PPE. This is something that you don't want to be exposed. And definitely take care while you're there.

I'm going to present a little bit of our newest data that's coming out. I work with a colleague named Dr. Unha Ho. She uses a non targeted chemical analysis she has been detecting in our Samples, not just this year, but in years past. She's been doing this for a while.

Discovered over 900 unique contaminants in our river water. And not just bacteria. I don't have enough time to present on all of our data, but basically we're finding a lot of industrial chemicals, illicit drug metabolites.

You'll have methamphetamines, fentanyl restricted pesticides that are banned in the United States, pharmaceuticals antimicrobials, and also some of those volatile sulfur compounds that are most likely responsible for some of the odors that we've been talking about.

So I think that one of the more critical findings we've been talking about, this hotspot, is just most recently, as early as last week, I finally got some of the data that said we have 106 chemicals that were detected exclusively at Saturn Boulevard.

So this is a chemical fingerprint that definitely identifies this Saturn as the hotspot where wastewater becomes airborne. And again, it's located less than a quarter mile from schools and families. So something else that's also interesting that we've been doing is we call it passive air sampling. This is a lot different than what Dr. Prather does.

It's a lot. It's like a low cost, new technology. Well, it's not really new, but it's something that hasn't been done in this river valley before. But we've deployed silicone wristbands as passive air samplers. They stay out there for about a week. We hang them. This is Saturn hotspot. You can see it hanging in the tree.

We hang them there for about a week. And just like with humans, you know, if you wear those wristbands, this will actually absorb chemicals that people are exposed to. And so we hang it in the air and see what we find. And we use that same non targeted chemical analysis.

Saturn Boulevard showed the highest chemical concentrations out of any of the spots where we put these wristbands. Here's what's a little bit alarming. A home just 1/4 mile away showed a nearly identical chemical fingerprint. So we know that this is filtrating the homes.

We also hung one at a friend's Imperial beach house that's close to the pier, miles away from this spot. And it shows many of the same markers as well. And so we hang some also here, our beautiful Scripps Pier, that's right out here as a control site. It did not pick up those same chemicals.

And so we do know that this isn't just background urban pollution that we're picking up. So right now we're trying to figure out what are all those chemicals that we're finding. But definitely it's getting from, as Dr. Prather mentioned, from the water to the air. Again, our famous colleague Ramon, he's embarrassed now.

This is one of the best pictures I've seen. I was there when this picture was taken. And as funny as it might sound right now, it actually was a really bad day that day. The smells were overwhelming. I know Ramon I actually met in the field. He was out there one day with his notepad and his pen.

He did not have any protection. I kept getting mad at him. I was like, I need you to put on a respirator. No, I am okay. I am okay. Then finally it got so bad, he is like, can I have one of those respirators? So he put one on. Is that your own?

Okay, well, maybe it was an earlier day whenever you had to borrow one, but I am really glad that you had one on that day. But it is pretty bad. We were out there daily at least, right, for a month taking samples.

And actually Ramon jumped in one day when I was feeling really sick and tired and he helped me pull samples because I looked like I was about to fall in that river. And if you guys go out there today, you'll see it's a bit difficult to get those samples.

But as a reminder, odor is not necessarily a reliable warning system in this situation because there's a lot of chemicals in this. And other studies have shown that wastewater treatment plants, the chemicals that can get into the air, don't always have an odor. So keeping that in mind.

So I want to talk just a little bit about from a public health standpoint. You heard some of these already, but where are some of the critical gaps that we can address? There's right now, as you've heard, no comprehensive epidemiological study linking these exposures to long term health outcomes.

We have people telling us what they're feeling, but we need that evidence base. We need biomonitoring to measure what's in our residents bodies. As you've heard, we also need accounting for the mixture of these effects and all of the chemicals that people are breathing.

Most of our hydrogen sulfide sources studied elsewhere, like I said, also release multiple toxic agents that interact. And so we need personal level exposure data and studies to account for these confounding pollutants, especially the impacts that it may be having on children. Protective interventions. We need purifiers in every room.

As you've heard, people are sleeping at night without these purifiers sometimes. And again, these odors are worse at night. Again, those 10,000 have been put out there, but it is exceeding the supply that's needed. We have a much greater need that we need. Outdoor workers and our military personnel. Let's talk about them a little bit.

They are heavily exposed. Our lifeguards are out there talking about skin rashes, headaches, gastrointestinal problems, being forced to have to jump in the water to save people even though the beaches are closed. These are people that are not able to get out of this exposure.

And we need to be thinking about protecting them and giving them appropriate measures for how to protect themselves. And then again, despite residents reporting indoor odors, we are not monitoring indoor air quality. So a better notification system also to help that is more protective than we currently have.

So bottom line, infrastructure solutions are going to take years, probably billions of dollars. That work must continue. But while we wait, we need action now. Protect residents and workers. You've already heard this many times, but this is absolutely a public health emergency.

And I do not say that lightly with I do think it is also the biggest environmental justice and environmental crisis that we have in the entire country right now. And so this is again something that exposure we know is multi pathway.

As you've heard, it's not just in the water, but it's also in the air, it's in homes, it's at beaches, not just lake locally but miles away. And the health impacts of being documented, they're ongoing vulnerable populations. Children with developing lungs, our older adult residents, outdoor workers, everybody is being disproportionately harmed.

So the current protections are mismatched to the scale of this need. This was a recent photo taken. Families still out there trying to enjoy the beach. That's hard for me when I see people having little kids in the water sometimes I know we've seen it when we're out there. It's hard for me.

Sometimes I run out there and tell them. But oftentimes people don't always want to hear what they already know that this is a problem. But these are communities and they deserve protection equal to any other community here in the state.

We have the science, we know what's there, we know where it's worst, we know who is at risk. We just need these resources and the political will that's matched to the urgency of this crisis. We have a huge team of people, we have more information.

We have a website now where we're posting almost real time weekly data on our health survey. Results and asking people to complete these surveys. And we're going to keep the health surveys open as long as we can to keep tracking this longitudinal exposure and health symptoms that people are reporting. So thank you.

Thanks. I promise. I want you to show some pretty photos. I highlight what we've actually lost. So. Sergeant Dean, Executive Director of Wildcoast for an international team that conserves coastal and marine ecosystems, addresses climate change through natural solutions. I first moved to IB in 1971. Just moved out of IB in 2024.

Wild coast had an office in IB up until about 2020. Left during the pandemic. But because of. Basically I left my hometown because of being exposed to sewage, having two sinus surgeries, having ear surgery, my kids taking my kids to the urgent care and emergency room for getting sick.

And then our staff\members, we had our beach, basically beachfront across or across the street from the beach office. We're getting sick just from being in our office. So anyway, we've paid the price for that.

But, you know, I grew up basically as an activist in Imperial beach and helped protect the Tijuana Estuary as a national wildlife refuge.

Sat in front of bulldozers and got beat up for it when I was in high school, but was proud to have been the mayor and addressed this issue and really focused attention on the impact to our beaches and our economy.

You know, we lose 12 miles of beach at a time, and that would be like losing every beach from obviously, Torrey Pines. It would be like losing access to every beach in LA from South Redondo beach to Santa Monica. Imagine if that happened. It'd be a national scandal.

As Supervisor aguirre said, There's 20,000 gallons of sewage that spills in LA. It's a national crisis. When a billion gallon spills in iv, no one cares. But, you know, Wild Coast is focused on keeping beaches pristine.

I just got back last night from Southern Mexico in Huatulco, a coastal resort city where I saw lots of sewage treatment plants. There's not a single other city in all of coastal Mexico that discharges anything like sewage the way they do in Tijuana. It would not be allowed. If there's a sewage spill in Acapulco, it's a crisis.

If there's a sewage spill in Mazatlan, there's a crisis. If there's a sewage spill in Tijuana, no one in Mexico cares. And it. I want to make sure this is clear. We cannot let Mexico off the hook for this crisis. But I wanted to show what the Tijuana Estuary National Wildlife refuge.

The sacred resource we have in IB Is supposed to look like. This is on a good day, right? This is what we're, this is what it's supposed to look like. We're not supposed to show that photo of the toxic waste and sewage that destroys our coast.

This is an incredibly important resource that includes six miles of state beaches. We have now lost access to two California state parks, Porter Field State Parks and Silverstrand State beach. Four miles of Silver Strand State beach and two miles at Borderfield State Park. These belong to the state of California.

The biggest issue with the residents of this region when they talk about the mental health crisis is what they tell you at the grocery store, at the gas station, at the car wash, at the beach they can't use and at CVS and IB is why don't they care about us? Why don't they care about us?

Why is our Governor ignoring us? How come the state, they don't expect the Federal Government to care about us. What they say is how come California doesn't care about us? And it's heartbreaking when you go around IB in Coronado and the entire South Bay and that's all people talk about. So it's really important to acknowledge that.

But this is part of a, an ecosystem, an ecoregion that includes over 100,000 acres of protected ecosystems on both sides of the border.

It's one of the most important wildlife, coastal and marine wildlife habitats and protected area conglomeration we have that includes a California, I mean a county park includes a Bios reserve, the islands of the Pacific, Bios reserve in Mexico that extends right to the border of 100,000 acres protected including Coronado.

Islands that are wildlife refuges include sand dunes, murrelets and elephant seals. And then we have the world's most important ocean migratory corridor, the Serengeti of the sea, the blue superhighway, right off the minute you get into the water, right? Blue whales, civic white sided dolphins, thousands of them. You can see offshore white sharks.

This is an orca killing a, eating a, about to eat a Pacific white side of dolphin right off Borderfield State park, right on the line.

So the thing about this is imagine if we lined up people with fire hoses and dump trucks and went around in a circle at the San Diego Zoo and started fire hosing toxic waste and sewage onto the animals and the guests and then started dump trucking sediment, dirt, trash and waste tires that California taxpayers actually paid to recycle onto the animals and the guests at the San Diego Zoo.

It'd be an international scandal. But instead, when it happens at Imperial beach in Coronado and South San Diego and animals and then all these protected species in this national, state and local wildlife refuges start dying, the response is oh, um, who cares? All right? This is the most important ocean migratory wildlife corridor in the world.

The entire world. All right? And we've decided to turn it into a toxic waste dump. But I start crying. The pain that people feel from losing something. This social resource, right? This place where we go to find joy is palpable. And the place where we go to find joy brings us pain. And then we're denigrated.

We're actually fighting to save. It is really hard to explain. This is a place of profound beauty and meaning. The place where we go to live out our lives. And IB is a working class community. But you know what? It's IB Coronado, South Bay, we're all one big family because we all hang out at the beach.

I used to hear about Mary Salas when she was married. She had. Her mom and dad got married. They asked each other to get married on the Ivy Pier, right? So that's my son surfing the border, right, At Borderfield State Beach. He was a state lifeguard. Both my kids were state lifeguards. I was a state lifeguard.

I lost my job as a lifeguard both in IB and at the state. But these are junior lifeguards. This is the program that IB holds dear, was canceled, Right. They had to go to Coronado and Mission Bay and Mission beach and San Diego Bay to use it. So that's what we've lost. Right?

So it's an ecological, it's an ecosystem, but it's a human. Humans are part of that ecosystem and they're being damaged and hurt and our kids are being hurt the most. We've decided in California that these kids and I attended Barry Elementary School. My brother went to Nester Elementary School. So.

And my middle school, Marvista Middle School is one of those schools being impacted. And my high school, Marvista High School, is one of those schools being impacted. All right, so pivot about the state of California, because the state of California is part of the problem, we are part of the solution. And part of the problem.

We export 3 million waste tires to Mexico every year. The state generates $2.2 million a year from tire recycling fees you pay from those tires. None of that money goes into recycling those tires. Those tires are exported to Mexico and then they're just piled up in canyons right next to the border fence.

And when it Rains thousands of tires. We estimate five to 6,000 tires wash into the US Side of the border every time it rains. This is Canyon Los Laurels. This is upstream from Borderfield State Park. The biggest cost item for California state parks every year is cleaning up waste tires and garbage in Borderfield state parks.

That cost them at least two to 3,000,000 dollars a year. That's the most expensive maintenance item for the state of California and all of its state parks. Last year, Wild Coast got a small grant of $25,000. From Verizon. From Verizon.

And we gave it 100% of it to California state Parks so they could clean up, fill up some waste bins for waste tires. Right. The California taxpayers and had already paid to recycle. Think about that.

Last year we got so sick of just looking at this that Wild Coast paid money to hire people in Tijuana to clean up waste tires in the channel, cleaning up thousands of them. All right, we did it. All right. We couldn't wait for anybody else to do it because they weren't doing it.

And then back in 2021, with support from Mark Benioff at Salesforce and UC Santa Barbara, we built a trash boom in the Tijuana. And right upstream from Borderfield State Park. We've captured tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of pounds of trash. And then it cost us $150,000. It took three months to build.

And I think it's great. The state of California built one on the US side of the border that cost 4.7 million. Basically took five years to build. So, you know, but we thought this would spur the development of a lot more on the Mexican side of the border. But up until now, no one else has built any.

None. Zero. I know the IBWC is concerned about that. So you can see this is after our trash boom is worked and we just. After it's been cleaned up in the city of Tijuana. I just cleaned out the sediment there.

But just to give you an idea of what it's like to work in these canyons, one of our main volunteers disappeared. He was disappeared by a cartel. There are areas in this canyon just a little bit up from here you don't want to go into. All right. It's not a safe place to work.

And then the residents also complain of all the noxious smells. So it's really, really, really profoundly challenging place to work. But this is the stuff that washes across the border into Borderfield State Park. So if you're at Borderfield State park after it Rains. This is what it looks like as well.

And then again, what we've been doing is just turning some of the tires into building materials. So we actually built a community park, the only park in this canyon of 100,000 people. And trying to get something done with the money, I mean, with the tires.

And so I guess my lesson here is we need to stop the sediment, the tires, the trash, the toxic waste and the sewage from impacting animals, our protected areas, our beaches and our communities. We need to focus on solutions big and small.

And where the state of California can start is first, please go visit your state parks employees at Silver Strand and just talk to them about what they're experiencing, how they feel abandoned by their own employers. And then number two, let's focus on the state can focus on waste, tires and other things like trash booms.

I think all the things that our distinguished researchers have elaborated and Supervisor Aguirre elaborated, these very tangible, specific things can reduce people's exposure, but also stop pollution as well, and make sure our kids and these communities have access to the resources that we essentially pay tax dollars to support. Thank. You.

Good morning, everyone. My name is Crystal Irving, and I'm so proud to serve as President of our union, SEIU Local 221, where we represent about 14,000 workers in this region. And I want to thank Senator Blakespear for your leadership in convening this really important hearing.

We represent park rangers who ensure the beauty and the safety of our county parks across the region. And that also includes the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park. And of course, we all know that parks were created for the well being of the communities that utilize them.

And that's everything from fresh air to activities to learning opportunities and more. But as we've learned today, that's not able to be upheld because of the sewage crisis that's happening.

And while our Members have been waving the flag on this issue for quite some time, it wasn't until Supervisor Paloma Aguirre got into office that we really started seeing some movement on the county level. So I also want to thank you and appreciate you for your leadership as well.

We also represent workers in the city of Imperial beach, which we've heard a lot about today. And our Members often share the impacts with me that they experience living in IB alone. And we've heard many of them covered, so I won't harp on them.

But you know, we've heard about the headaches, we've heard about the nausea, we've heard about the skin rashes, but also another factor is because a lot of this happens at night and many of them become ill or are unable to sleep.

Sometimes they're also not able to show up to work, which also means that other services in the communities are directly impacted because they are unable to fulfill that obligation due to the health and safety experiences they're having as a result of the aerosols that they're breathing in.

I also want to highlight the specific experience of one of our Members. Dr. Dedina was speaking a little bit about the lifeguard program and so I actually just want to read his experience to you all to to hear directly from one of our workers who is impacted.

My name is Adam Wright and I was born and raised in Imperial beach and I've spent the last 44 years in this community.

For 26 of those years, I've served as an Imperial beach lifeguard, 13 years as a seasonal guard and instructor in the junior lifeguard program, and the last 13 as a permanent ocean lifeguard, including several years as a Marine Safety Sergeant and now Junior Lifeguard Coordinator.

The Junior Lifeguard Program has been a cornerstone of this community since its founding in 1995. Many consider it a rite of passage, shaping kids into the next generation of watermen and water women.

This crisis is robbing our youth of what it means to grow up in Southern California's surf community and preventing them from building the familiarity, confidence and love for the ocean that so many of us were fortunate to experience.

I'm also trying to raise a family with a strong bond to the ocean in this community and it breaks my heart every time I have to tell my children that they need to stay out of the water because of the pollution. And as a lifeguard, entering the water is part of my duty.

With ongoing research into the impacts of sea spray and ocean aerosols, we are learning more about what we may be breathing in every single day. There are days when I leave work with a raspy throat and a headache. I am deeply concerned about the potential short term and long term health effects of working in these conditions.

And as first responders, we accept the risks inherent in saving lives. But this risk is not one that should be keeping us awake at night. The toll is not only physical, but mental. We have gone from being ambassadors of the ocean, helping the public recreate safety to warning people to about the toxic dangers in the water.

Many community Members and visitors are frustrated and angry about the situation and often they direct that anger at us, even when we are simply doing our jobs and educating them about the water quality. This is a crisis that threatens our ocean, our children, our workers, and our community identity. And we cannot continue like this.

So I am asking you urgently to take every possible action and every pressure point, every resource available to stop this crisis. Imperial beach deserves clean water. Our kids deserve access to their ocean. And our lifeguards deserve a safe workspace.

And again, those are the words of one of our Members, Adam Wright, when he was seven.

I taught Adam when he was seven. Look at that.

Look at this community connection. That's how deep these roofs go in Imperial beach, right? And so this is a safety issue, plain and simply. And you've heard about these concerns, from the air quality to the illnesses and the previous lack of testing, which under new leadership has turned around quite a bit.

And as has been demonstrated today, we hear about the impact to our community. But I also want to highlight that our Members, the workers, are exposed to these dangers every single day. And in their, the capacity of their jobs, they're exposed to it eight hours a day, five days a week, for years at a time.

And so of course, our highest priority as people who serve the public is to ensure the safety of the public that we get to serve. And our Members absolutely love serving and they love the outdoors.

And that's why they choose to still do this job with all the risks that are known and unknown, but they're still concerned about the unknown long term effects of what this crisis will have on their health.

And while doing the work that they love is so meaningful and important, not only to them individual, individually, but to the communities that they serve, they also shouldn't be sacrificed while carrying out these responsibilities. And that's what's happening every single day that goes by, that these issues are not being addressed.

And so I again am so proud to be here representing the workers who carry out these really important roles for our communities. And it is imperative that we absolutely do better.

Not just by the communities that we serve, but also by the workers who are dedicating every working hour of their lives to ensuring that the community has what they want and need to be healthy, happy and thriving.

So thank you for that.

Thank you very much. It was very valuable to have those different perspectives. Thank you for taking your time and your passion to come forward today. We'll move on to our third panel now and then we'll move to questions and public testimony after that.

So our third panel is.

We would like to invite up Joaquin Esquivel, Chair of the State Water Board, and Paula Forbis, Officer of the San Diego Air Pollution Control District. And you're welcome to begin when ready.

Thank you, Chair Blakespear, Senators, Assemblymember. Really appreciate the opportunity here to join today and importantly, to listen. Really appreciate those in the room here. Just I know a tremendous amount of leadership on this issue and just really appreciate the opportunity to talk about the work the State Board has done. So, my name is Joaquin Esquivel.

I am the Chair of the State Water Resources Control Board. The State Board administers water rights in the state of California. We also oversee drinking water regulation. We also finance a lot of water projects in the state and importantly, as well, we oversee water quality regulation along with our nine regional water quality control boards there.

I want to acknowledge and thank I know we have the presence here of Executive Officer, Dave Gibson with the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. Really appreciate his presence here today and I know ongoing leadership here in the region when it comes to tackling this issue.

And it is a crisis and it's a crisis that the community has seen before.

And I think, you know, when we think to the history here of the challenge of sewage and water pollution from the Tijuana River Valley, we were in a crisis point in the 80s and it is why the IBWC plant was built with federal attention and investment.

But I think the reality is that the tension kind of waned once people felt that the crisis was resolved by the building of the plant, which, for a while, it ameliorated, certainly the worst of what had brought us to that moment in the crisis. But here we are again.

And I think what's incumbent upon this moment is that we ensure that, for the long term, we don't return to a crisis moment within this watershed. This remains a lasting and ongoing relationship both with Mexico, but importantly, between local, state, and federal partners to ensure that we again don't get back to this moment.

And I think that that's indicative of the 250 million that Governor Newsom fought for, worked with the locals here as well, worked with our congressional delegation to make sure that what we were spending here at the IBWC Plant wasn't just a band aid.

Wasn't just going to hear address flows for the short term, but really, think of the long term and I think importantly as well, while the IBWC Plant is the linchpin and there, you know, I'll take a step back for just a moment and say, you know, when you look across the state and you think about the quality of life that we all enjoy, it is because of our regulatory programs that are allowed to go upstream.

You know, the problem of pollution, although can be tried to be managed downstream, the solutions are upstream, stopping the sources and preventing then the costs that it is on all of us to treat it down at the bottom of the watershed.

And as we well know though, this watershed spans into a different country. So, when it comes to our programs, when it comes to our regulatory authorities, when it comes to the things that we use to ensure that quality of life, we're at a great disadvantage here.

And so, I think I just have to kind of note that when we think why, how is it that we have come to this? Why is it that communities here in Imperial Beach in the South Bay aren't receiving the same quality of life that others in the state are able to.

But the IBWC Plant then is the linchpin. And you know, had put the regional board in a bit of an awkward position because, you know, we can't, again, our legal authorities don't extend to the other side, but they do extend to the Federal Government and the IBWC and the Regional Board, at one point, sued the IBWC in order to help ensure that there was action.

And I think that that's where I just want to communicate a history here of the Regional Water Quality Control Board and the state trying to use its authorities best to try to figure this out.

But again, disadvantage because of the legal complexity that we find the watershed. So, I think, you know, IBW seed plant is the linchpin. But the cease-and-desist order, we recently went from just, you know, allowing the 25 million gallons per day treatment to that 35. Ultimately, we want to get to 50.

But it isn't just the wastewater treatment plant. It is places like Go Canyon or Smuggler's Gulch. And there, the state has also invested 35 million already, which includes 4.7 for that trash boom that we were able to partner with Rural Communities Corporation Assistance—Assistance Corporation—in order to ensure that that is in place.

I'll just say in this last water year, that trash boom collected 750 tons of trash that would otherwise have made its way into the ocean.

And so again, we need to continue to make investments that are not just about IBWC Plant and importantly, you know, the backbone and linchpin that is, but all these other places and sources of water, of pollution, coming in, whether it's trash, tires, bacteria, sediment.

The couple last things that I just want to mention, I know what the Regional Board has also advanced here is an advanced recovery plan when it comes to the Tijuana River Valley. That is a comprehensive approach here to ensure that bacteria, trash, all the pollutants that were mentioned here and are of concern are comprehensively being addressed.

We have what's known as the integrated report in our 303-P list on the Federal Clean Water Act side. There, there were 55 impairments that were found in the Tijuana River Valley. But importantly, through that process as well, we're able to kind of stitch together our efforts and make sure that we have as comprehensive approach as we can.

And I want to acknowledge and thank the Regional Water Quality Control Board, its chair, board, for the attention that they continue to bring to this as well.

I'll quickly end on Prop 4 and as we know and we've heard that we have $50 million for border—river pollution challenges—both the Tijuana River Valley and the Mexicali Calexico area are called out. They're the New River.

I grew up in the Coachella Valley, sister valley over here, over the mountains, and on our watershed there too, we also have these transboundary pollution issues. So, the Prop 4 bond dollars are for both watersheds. We will be going through a public process.

Governor Newsom had put into his budget a request for an APA Exemption. That was not granted, wo we will have to go. Although we have emergency authorities for the APA process, we will still have to go through a public process in order to develop the guidelines for the funding.

So, there will be further public engagement and process before the State Water Resources Control Board as we then go to decide where those 50 million are going. I think important to note, the Board has other financial resources that are not just that 50 million. So, important to figure out where we spend that 50 million.

Important to note as well that the State Board, since 2019, has actually invested $12 billion in the state of California wastewater, water quality projects, drinking water, stormwater capture. So, when we think about the state as a partner, when we think about the resources that we have, it's important to not just narrow in on the 50 million.

Let's really think about all the ways in which there are other pots in Prop 4 that we can make sure that this crisis is addressed and again, for the long term, really ensure that we're not finding ourselves here in a decade or two.

And here yet another generation of folks needing to have this same fight and have this same discussion.

Thank you. I know we're running past time, so I'm going to go through my slides relatively quickly. My name is Paula Forbis. I'm the Air Pollution Control Officer for the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District. There we are. And it's a real pleasure to be here.

I want to thank Senator Blakespear, the Assembly Members and Senators here with us today for this critical conversation. I also want to thank our board members. We have two governing board members here today, Supervisor Aguirre and Dr. Paula Stigler Granados.

And just want to thank them for their work and their continued—their continued efforts to ensure that this crisis continues to be addressed. And so, I also wanted to just echo some of the comments of Chair Esquivel related to our jurisdiction. We are one of 35 local air districts in the state of California.

Our boundaries are contiguous with the San Diego County boundaries. We regulate stationary sources of air pollution in San Diego County. And so, the river is—the Tijuana River—is not within our regulatory jurisdiction. However, we do have some limited jurisdiction around nuisance for that source. And I will get to that in just a moment.

And so, to date, this has been the largest, most comprehensive effort that San Diego Air Pollution Control has launched in response to an air quality incident. And you know, in our history, we've never mobilized such a large and comprehensive response.

And it's merited, as you've seen through all the presentations today, it's absolutely warranted by the scale and severity of this crisis. So, with that.

So, as was mentioned in a prior slide—or a prior presentation—we started to receive a lot of odor complaints about the Tijuana River area in the summer of 2024. And we had seen routine complaints in the area, but nothing at the scale that we started to see in the summer of 2024.

This chart shows the magnitude of the daily complaints we were receiving. And typically, for all sources in San Diego County, we receive about 800 complaints per year. But at the peak of last summer, we were receiving over 200 per day related to the odors coming from the Tijuana River. We mobilized our 24/7 compliance team to go out.

We identified some equipment failures on the part of IBWC that were contributing to the problem and issued three notices of violation to IBWC for those. And as Dr. Prather noted, there's a strong correlation between these levels of complaints and the levels of hydrogen sulfide that have been measured in the communities.

As you can see, the odor complaints have decreased considerably over the last several months. We're still receiving, on average, one to three per day. And again, over time, that's a lot of complaints for our agency. So, obviously, the problem has not been solved. We also launched an air quality monitoring network for hydrogen, specifically sulfide.

This is not something that we had in place before. Some of the larger air districts in California have existing networks related to refineries, for example, surrounding refineries. But this was a new network for us to establish. And so, we set up three different monitors. These are Teledyne T101. So, they're reference grade monitors, approved by CARB.

And you can see they're located in Imperial Beach at the Civic Center, Nestor Adbarry Elementary, and in San Ysidro at the fire station where we have an existing monitoring station. This is a snapshot of our web portal, which has this data.

If you look at that clock, my slide is not fancy enough to be able to click on it, but if you were to go to the website and click on the clock, you can see real time hourly data from our monitors. And then, you can also toggle to see all of the data we've collected since this began.

So, this chart shows the levels that we have measured since the, since the crisis—well, since we got our monitors up and running in response to the crisis. And as you can see, that red line is the standard that we've talked about. That's the CARB Odor Nuisance Standard. We set up our monitors, so it was after the point at which Dr. Prather noted in her presentation that Pvcela had come back online.

But then, you can see there's a lot of exceedances in the April, May, June timeframe when there was a lot of construction going on south of the border.

And so, one of the things that we've noted in our meetings with IBWC, in our continued work on this, is that as those construction projects continue and as flow to the plant is toggled up and down, we will continue to see exceedances. As recently as last night, we saw an exceedance at Nestor.

So, this is a slide showing our hydrogen sulfide advisories. Residents can go onto our website—anyone can go onto our website—and sign up for advisories and updates about hydrogen sulfide levels in the area. We developed this in conjunction with the County of San Diego and in consultation with California Department of Public Health, ATSDR, EPA.

And so, this is the community guidance that we worked and developed with them. It is up on our website to provide information to residents about what they can do to protect themselves in the event that these levels are exceeded.

And so, based on this guidance, we've been issuing odor updates and advisories when the concentration exceeds 30 parts per billion. And again, those can go out by email and we just opened up a text message ability for those. Next has been mentioned, our Air Purifier Distribution Program. This is our air improvement relief effort or...

We, at this point, have approved for distribution over 10,400 air purifiers for the affected communities. We launched this program officially in February of 2025. And again, this was an unprecedented program for us. We had done smaller scale programs in other affected communities, but more in the hundreds of purifiers.

For us to mobilize and get 10,000 purifiers out the door in one year was really a big level effort.

We launched the program with—by—redirecting interest funds from our Community Air Protection Program, 2.7 million in those funds, and also had contributions from federal EPA, a CARB Supplemental Environmental Project Fund, the County of San Diego District 3 in the City of Solana Beach for a total of approximately 3 million for the program.

And we also used funding to provide purifiers for classrooms in the South Bay Unified School District and associated daycares which, combined with the purifiers they had already purchased, means there is now a purifier in every classroom in those schools.

We've also contracted for 630 purifiers to be delivered to the San Ysidro School District and its associated daycares. And it provided purifiers to at least 12 in home daycares in the affected community.

And so, we're continuing to work with the remaining schools and daycares within this area to provide purifiers, though some have declined to participate in the program. I also want to note that in October, we issued a survey to recipients of the purifiers that had gotten them prior to the end of July. And 80—we got a really high response rate to that.

We were really proud of that. We got approximately a 25% response rate to our survey. Of those respondents, 88% indicated they were satisfied or very satisfied with the purifier. And significant numbers reported improvement in respiratory symptoms, sleeping, and overall wellbeing. And 79% noticed a reduction in odors.

Our governing board, as was mentioned, is going to be meeting at 2 o'clock this afternoon to discuss the next steps for the program. And so, with that, that's just a very high-level overview of the work that we've done in response to the crisis.

And I just like to wrap my comments by noting a couple of ways that we could get additional support from the state. We talked about standards in a couple of the different presentations.

And we're going to be calling on the California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, OEHHA, to revisit its standards, both the chronic and the acute standard. Those have not been revisited by them since 1999 for the acute and 2000 for the chronic. So, those could really use an update.

And CARB bases its Ambient Air Quality Standard on the OEHHA results, the public health research they do. We are also going to be continuing to ask and advocate for additional state funding for our purifier program.

As I mentioned, we've approved over 10,000 but has been mentioned that's far below the number of residents in the community that would benefit from these. And our survey has really demonstrated the positive impacts that they can have on people's health. Despite it being a temporary relief and a band aid of sorts for the crisis.

We estimate that the additional cost for this program, just for the next year, would range from 10 to $14 million to provide purifiers for another 10,000 households in the coming calendar year. And then, finally, the monitoring network that we established, we diverted funds from EPA grants for our regional monitoring network to be able to set that up.

We estimate that an additional 1.5 million would be required to pay staffing and maintenance of the network over the next two years. So, we'll be continuing to advocate for state funding to support that effort.

And again, I would like to thank the committees for this important opportunity to bring forward all of the needs that and the gaps that are needed to truly be able to address this crisis. I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Well, thank you very much. We really appreciate your testimony. I think Senator Padilla might have a question.

Madam Chair—by that, Chair Esquivel, nice to see you again. Appreciate your work. Just on you referenced administrative declination of an APA waiver. But there may be legislative efforts in that regard.

Do you have an idea how you might quantify any associated time or cost savings that would be associated with the waiver with respect to developing standards and administering funds?

Yeah, I mean it would at least be kind of months long process a bit to go through actual APA. I don't want to give you timeframes and not be able to meet them here, but there would be significant time savings if there wasn't an APA process.

I think back to Prop 1 Bond Dollars and we were able to quickly get things out because without having to go through a full process. But there would still be some public process.

I think the interest in these dollars and the importance is that we'll have to have some conversation just so everyone can feel comfortable with the decisions on where dollars are going and everyone feel that there's a fair process. But thankfully, with an APA exemption, it would be a lot quicker of a process.

[Unintelligible]

I appreciate you acknowledging that.

Could you please speak a little more into the microphone? There are people in the back.

I'm so sorry, guys. Is that better? All right. I just—I appreciate you acknowledging the time savings for the record and of course acknowledge the need for public input and what didn't mean to put you on the spot, but I do appreciate that acknowledgement because it may be advantageous.

Thank you. Thank you for that, Senator.

Thank you. All right, well, we will go to public comment now. So, if you'd like to make—thank you very much to our last panelists.

If you would like to make a public comment, there's a microphone that will be set up right there and we encourage you to keep it concise, ideally a minute or so. If you'd like to make a public comment, you can go stand in line right behind that microphone.

I had a question. Is this being recorded? Thank you. My name is Lori Saldana. I represented San Diego in the Legislature for six years. Before that, I was a plaintiff in a lawsuit over the design of this facility based on living in Mexico and serving on the Border Environment Cooperation Commission. My question is, what is being done?

Thirty years ago, the federal EIS, regarding toxicity problems, said the proposed mitigation to address the impacts to the marine environment—now, of course, the river—is to ensure the overall performance of a successful implementation of a pretreatment program in Tijuana.

Now, having lived in Mexico, having been married to an oceanographer from Sisse, the lack of collaboration across the border is really harming.

I don't know how many researchers are here from Mexico today, but if we don't cooperate across the border and develop an industrial pretreatment program working with the city of San Diego, which promised 30 years ago to assist Tijuana in developing industrial source control, this will continue to poison not only people, but bioaccumulate in the marine environment and come back to us in fish and lobster and other species that are consumed by people.

So, my question is, what cross border collaboration is taking place with Tijuana, with CESSP, with SILA, to develop an industrial source control program and keep these toxic wastes out of the waste stream? Thank you.

Thank you.

Esteemed Chair Blakespear and Members of the Committee, my name is Miriam Mendoza, International and Policy Advisor for the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce.

On behalf of the over 2,000 members and 300 jobs that the Chamber represents, we express our strong support for actions that mitigate the transboundary pollution crisis that has impacted our community for decades.

This issue continues to be a top priority for the Chamber, and we have joined local, state, and federal efforts to secure funding, advance infrastructure, and elevate this issue on both sides of the border.

The Chamber will continue to advocate for additional resources and actions including through its annual delegation trips to Washington, D.C., Sacramento, and Mexico City, and won't stop until we reach a permanent solution. Please consider the Chamber as a resource. We look forward to further collaborating with the State Legislature to reach a sustainable solution to the transboundary pollution crisis. Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Blakespear and Committee Members. My name is Abilene Runyon and I'm here on behalf of the Rural Community Assistance Corporation, or RCAC, which is a 501c3 nonprofit headquartered in West Sacramento that provides technical assistance to 13 Western states and Pacific islands.

We are a small but critical part of driving solutions at the Tijuana River through our successful Trash Booms Project, which I know has been mentioned a few times here today.

Since its installation in November 2024, we have intercepted approximately 1.2 million pounds of trash and debris to date and exhibited a near perfect capture rate with the trash booms. We are—it is integral to secure interim state funding for the ongoing operations and maintenance of this project, past the current storm season.

Existing funding through the State Water Board will be exhausted by next summer. While we engage with federal partners to establish ongoing operations and maintenance budget through IBWC, Federal funds will not be in place before the next storm season begins.

Securing state funding is critical to sustain the operations of the project and prevent hundreds of tons of transboundary trash and debris from flowing into the lower estuary covering San Ysidro to Imperial Beach. We ask the Committee to support interim state funding for this project, and I thank you for your time this morning.

Good morning. I guess it's afternoon. My name's Lisa Ross. I'm the Chair of the San Diego Chapter, Sierra Club. I also serve on the California Advocacy Committee for Sierra Club California. I thank you so much for bringing this hearing here to San Diego to make it convenient so that we can discuss the issue.

It is the view of our chapter, the San Diego Chapter, that this is the number one environmental crisis, environmental justice crisis, and environmental justice issue, not only in the state of California, but in the nation.

We pledge to continue to elevate the issue within our own membership, as well as throughout the state of California and our national Sierra Club. I also want to thank Serge Dedina for pointing out how beautiful this area looks and is and what a threat—until you look at the white foam and understand what it is. It is also devastating impacts on biodiversity and habitat in the area.

So, I pledge to you, on behalf of our membership, any legislation you bring, any regulation you want us to support, any appropriations you want us to stand up for, I promise you Sierra Club will be with you and will support and thank you so much for this.

Good afternoon or good morning still. I'm a resident of Encinitas in California and I'm very impressed with the amount of research that has been shown this morning on the pollution occurring at the border. And I would like to know, I'm just interested in knowing about the level of communication that you have with the Governor of the Estado de California, the Baja California del Norte.

If you have been able to find a team of people there that is also interested in solving the pollution problem for their own children in Tijuana.

I'm sure the Governor of Baja California del Norte has probably children that are affected by the same pollution in their schools. So, have we made any attempt to communicate with our Governor to build a team on the other side of the border to identify the sources of pollution so that they can be controlled? Thank you very much.

Thank you. Steve Futterman. I'm from Imperial Beach. I live a block from the breach—a block from the beach. Excuse me. And now, miss—I'm sorry. You seem like a very nice person. Now, I'm assuming that bacteria levels have elevated in Encinitas, now the people of Encinitas care about what's going on in Imperial Beach.

The kids on South Bay Munro School District, only 29% could read at grade level. But former Mayor Dedina, that presented today, in 2008, Mayor Deana Loris Aldana, Supervisor Aguirre, everybody from Wild Coast, they killed the project that would have built a public private partnership in Tijuana.

And in... Aldana's statement in 2008, that was 15 years ago, he said, this is a win for good government and clean water. But here we are, 15 years down the road now and Steve Padilla and everybody wants us to funnel more money into the nonprofit industrial complex.

We don't need billions more to know that my community is being poisoned. You want me to bring my four-month-old granddaughter to my house to live in a cesspool? This is nothing but performative junk.

And Senator Jones, I hope you look into how much money is being funneled through this level of corruption. Thank you.

Good afternoon. I think it's afternoon. Morning. My name is Ramon Chaitis. I'm the dude with the mask.

I am the Director of Education and Environmental Advocacy for Un Mar De Colores. We're an outdoor equity nonprofit. We offer free programming for kids to reconnect to the ocean, including their families and the larger community that is underserved. I also represent the Tijuana River Coalition.

It's a collective of organizations on both sides of the border nonprofits, agencies, and local leaders doing work in the Tijuana River. And so, one of the things that I wanted to really push a little bit is, and I'm glad that Chair Esquivel is here—I think he's still here.

But I know that there's a long list that the Regional Water Quality Board, led by Dave Gibson, have put out. In terms of plans, it's something that was echoed by Supervisor Aguirre. And some of those, those projects are low hanging fruit.

And when we look at the source of air pollution, specifically at Saturn, we see that as low hanging fruit. That's a small project in the grand scheme of things about re-engineering a set of culverts. And so, how do we do that? I think we've known about this issue for a year now. It's that hotspot specifically.

And it's really hard for us on the ground to kind of grasp why that issue has not been taken care of. That land is owned by partially the Navy, city. And of course, what comes through the river is a responsibility of the IBWC.

So, how do we, you know, streamline those efforts so that we can really eliminate that source of pollution? And then we could deal with some of the other stuff. I think on the ground as well, what's, what we see is a lot of collaboration between nonprofits and organizations on both sides of the border.

Our organization, along with Surfrider Foundation, was able to designate the river two times in a row as one of the top 10 most endangered rivers in the US. Now, that national attention helps, it supports, and we'd like to think that that attention has brought more efforts on the federal level to the region.

And so, another thing I want to highlight is that some of these ideas do involve cross border collaboration. Right?

And so, when we look at like those sources of the issue, I look at someone like Waylon Mattson from Four Walls International, which is somewhere here, was one of the best ideas in terms of attacking the source of pollution on the other side of the border through an environmental impact fund.

So, if you haven't heard of that, I would really encourage you take a look at that and talk to Wayland. He's here. You can talk to him right now to tell you all about that. And lastly, we should be talking about de channelizing the river, on the Tijuana side. That's the source of all this.

It's a shuttle, it's a chute for all this pollution to rapidly flow out of Tijuana and come to this side of the border and impact us. So, thank you very much.

Hello, my name's Leon Benham and I am the President of the Citizens for Coastal Conservancy. We're a nonprofit out of Imperial Beach and we're totally self-funded with funds from the local public. And you can see our sign that we have been putting out for more than four years.

And behind the sign on all our signs, you'll see an educational map that shows what's going on. The river has been diverted. It has been changed to go up north and pond next to our house. This is the hot spot. So, we have intentionally moved the river a half mile closer to our homes.

And this happened in 1993. Aerial photos show heavy equipment working on Hollister diverting the river. Putting the river back where it should be would not only move the toxins away but would eliminate the ponding. A consolidated river going back, in aerial photos from 1940s, if you look at them that basically the river after rains, it is dry.

So, putting the river back is—solves a lot of problems. We do not have ponding. It's moving away from our house. And the 655,000 yards of sand cobbles that come to our beach actually scour the river and remove the sewage by suspending it in the water column.

Now, you see this flyer I put out and I want to just emphasize that, you know, in 2019, we hired the best engineers in the world out of Denmark, called Arcadis. They objectively looked at the Tijuana River sewage problem.

And they came up with the one thing that goes back to 1984, when Ronald Reagan and Jose Del Madrid—okay, so basically, they put in the new pumps, per the Arcadist Plan, and those pumps sent everything to 10 miles south of Imperial Beach, where I live. And within six months, we had really clean water.

We had the cleanest water we have. And so, you know, we really need to go back and look at what we have done and take a look at where we're going. Because right now, it's like, shoot, ready, aim. We're not acting in a logical way to solve this problem. Thank you.

Good afternoon. My name is Philip Musigas. I'm the Executive Director of San Diego Coastkeeper. And can you hear me okay? So, Coastkeeper has been engaged on this issue for about two and a half years. In 2024, we filed a lawsuit against IBWC because of over five years of Clean Water Act violations from their South Bay Treatment Plant.

Within a year of our lawsuit, they came back into compliance with about 90% of those violations. So, our legal action worked, I think, at least to address the discharges into the ocean offshore from Imperial Beach. We also started a water quality monitoring program. We collect water samples from the Tijuana River monthly.

We've been doing that since about November 20, 2024, and we're sharing that data with the public and with the researchers like Dr. Prather and Dr. Granados. I have just three requests for you all today. I'll be as brief as I can. The first one relates to the USMCA.

So, the—our understanding is that the treaty now is undergoing a periodic review by US, Mexico, and Canada, and it's an opportunity for the public and for elected officials to weigh in. So, I would encourage you all to think about doing a group letter to the US Trade Representative, calling for increased funding under the USMCA process.

We got $300 million back in 2018 through this process.

I'd encourage you to at least get a letter in to request additional funding to address a lot of these infrastructure needs and also, to address the issue of, which was raised already, of industrial chemicals from maquiladoras from manufacturing facilities in Tijuana without a pretreatment system, getting into the sewer system, flowing through the Tijuana River, and also just making sure that you understand those industrial chemicals, when they go through a sewage treatment plant, are not removed by the sewage treatment process.

So, they are passed through to the ocean, they're passed through into these communities. Second request, I just would support the state funding for air purifiers and also for the Saturn Boulevard hotspot. As Ramon said, that is a simple problem.

We just need funding and a plan to address that waterfall effect that Paloma and other people have talked about today. Third, the maquiladoras. Senator Padilla, I know you've made efforts in the past legislatively to try and address those.

I think it would go a long way to increasing accountability if you could look at identifying US companies that have do business in California that have manufacturing facilities in Tijuana and hold them accountable. You know, if they are not treating their industrial wastewater prior to putting it in the sewer system, find a way to hold them accountable here in California.

You have that authority. If you're creative about it, I encourage you to use it. Because unless we address this industrial chemical pollution going into the river, we're not going to solve this problem long term.

And we have untold health of effects, both to the people living here and to the wildlife and the marine life that Serge talked very eloquently about. We've been pumping industrial chemicals into the ocean for decades with no sense of what impact that's had. Thank you.

Halka. Greetings, Chair Blakespear and Committee Members. Thank you for the opportunity to provide public comment today on the pollution crisis on Kumeyaay territories and your consistent climate advocacy. My name is Coach Jackson. Today, I'm here with Coastal Defenders.

We help to reconnect system impacted communities, specifically Indigenous youth, to the coast through our guardianship pathway, Indigenous leadership youth and young adults. We have several aquatic maritime research and monitoring partnerships here on Kumeyaaya territories at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

As you know, San Diego County is home to 18 Indigenous reservations, which is the highest amount of reservations in a county in the entire nation. However, none of these reservations exist along the coast. So, our youth spend up to three hours a day traveling back and forth to reservations.

I couldn't help but notice today the—I'll say absence just in case I missed it—the minimal attendance of tribal participation in presentations on Indigenous science. Due to this displacement and the lack of representation, we respectfully request investment to please be made to ensure Indigenous guardianship and co-management occurs in accordance with local and state tribal engagement objectives, which I know you agree.

I look forward to collaborating with you to help make that happen. Wanishi. Thank you.

Hello, I'm Tony Sino Roscoe. I am a student at UC San Diego and a volunteer with CalBrooks Students. We just started running a campaign called Stop the Sewage and we just asked for support for the Border Water Quality Restoration and Protection Act, authored by Representative Juan Vargas and coauthored by Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff.

It's a federal bill, so I believe it has a lot of quality in helping to assist and expedite projects in the Mexican side as well. Especially considering that this was formed out of a new treaty just made in July with the current EPA, showing how there's broad bipartisan support ready and getting this bill passed would help to implement the funding of the EPA much better. So, thank you.

Hello, my name is Waylon Mattson. I'm the Director of Four Walls International. I just want to say thank you to Senator for hosting this joint hearing and just encourage you to continue to bring your colleagues down to the border region to see the challenges that we all, we all face.

I just came back from Sacramento and spoke with the Pollution Control Finance Authority, now—or will be known as the Capital Programs and Climate Financing Authority.

And hopefully we can continue to work together with Sacramento to strengthen the binational collaboration and cooperation, whether it be through Cal EPA's Border Affairs Council or other legislation that could innovate and create other pathways to really address this at the source, as mentioned by the Chair earlier. So, thank you for your time.

Thank you. And on your last point, we are heading this afternoon to the hotspot at Saturn, so we'll be able to see it firsthand. Thank you. Thank you.

I want to thank all the individuals who participated today during the public comment period, and also, I want to especially thank our panelists for taking the time and expertise to come and present to us today. We appreciate the participation, knowledge, and insightful remarks. We have now concluded our agenda for this hearing. Thank you, everyone, for your cooperation.

This joint legislative informational hearing is now adjourned.

Excellent. I didn't have any closing remarks.