"IMPERIAL BEACH, California/TIJUANA, Mexico - Each day, millions of gallons of sewage cascade through a canyon and into the Pacific Ocean just south of the U.S.-Mexican border. As any surfer in San Diego knows, summer swells that come from the south will push the toxic brew north.
Meanwhile, millions more gallons of treated and untreated sewage trickle down the Tijuana River and into the sea just north of the border.
When the wind and currents conspire, the odor of fecal bacteria fouls the otherwise quaint San Diego County town of Imperial Beach, where Mayor Paloma Aguirre calls the discharges "the biggest environmental and public health disaster in the nation that nobody knows of."
Were it the result of a hurricane or wildfire, rather than decades of neglect, the crisis might warrant a declaration of emergency, freeing recovery funds to address environmental damage, the threat to public health, and loss of tourism.
Instead, beachlovers and politicians are agonizing over the protracted efforts to upgrade infrastructure on both sides of the border."
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