Imperial Beach Disaster Zone

Imperial Beach sits at the mouth of the Tijuana River, making it the frontline community for decades of cross-border contamination. Since the 1960s, untreated sewage from Tijuana’s growing urban and industrial base has spilled north into U.S. waters, overwhelming ecosystems, fouling beaches, and threatening public health.

By 1980, ruptured pipelines and failed pumping stations routinely sent millions of gallons of raw sewage into the estuary, forcing quarantines across multiple miles of Southern California coastline. These early disasters revealed the structural weaknesses of Tijuana’s infrastructure and the lack of binational preparedness.

  The problem extends beyond sewage. 

Untreated industrial waste has laced the watershed with toxic chemicals including heavy metals, carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and banned pesticides like DDT.  A 2024 study identified 170 pollutants embedded in river sediments at levels exceeding health thresholds, signaling that contamination is now locked into soils, groundwater, and coastal waters.

This chemical legacy compounds the bacterial risks, creating a complex disaster zone where sewage, industrial effluent, trash, and sediments interact to degrade water quality and biodiversity.

 Aging sewer lines, failing pumps, and insufficient treatment plants in Tijuana and South Bay are the backbone of the crisis

 Capacity has never matched the scale of growth, leaving untreated flows to bypass containment systems. 

The Tijuana Estuary a designated Wetland of Global Importance has been degraded by decades of waste, stripping its natural buffering capacity. Sediment basins and trash control systems were never built at scale until the 2020s, long after contamination had accumulated

Despite treaties and the creation of the IBWC, enforcement has lagged. 

Binational agreements were weak, communication protocols poor, and legal mandates often ignored until litigation forced action.

Community groups, alongside the City of Imperial Beach, launched lawsuits against the U.S. IBWC in 2018, citing Clean Water Act violations. Settlements in 2022 compelled federal authorities to commit to infrastructure upgrades.

In 2024, residents expanded legal action to Veolia Water North America, alleging gross negligence in operating the South Bay plant. Calls to designate the Tijuana River Valley as a federal Superfund site remain active.