Students from South County have written letters to elected officials, gathered petition signatures, and taken to the streets to protest an end to the sewage crisis that has shuttered South County beaches and polluted the air they breathe.
And now they’re knocking on state lawmakers’ doors.
“It’s very important and very special for the people we speak to: the senators, the staffers, the assembly members,” said Eric Camberos, a 17-year-old junior at Chula Vista Community Charter School. “They can really see that there is a face to the issue.”
Camberos and several students from his school and Coronado High School’s Stop the Sewage Club flew to Sacramento this week. They sat down with lawmakers and urged their support for two bills they said could help their communities with the ongoing pollution.
One, sponsored by state Sen. Steve Padilla, D-18, would modernize the state standard for exposure to a toxic gas that has become airborne. Senate Bill 58 would require the California Air Resources Board to review the air quality standards for hydrogen sulfide, which have remained unchanged since being adopted in 1969, and consider adopting stricter standards. Researchers studying the impacts of the polluted Tijuana River have found that the noxious gas, as well as chemicals from tires, illicit drugs and personal care products in the river become airborne.
The other is Assembly Bill 35, which Assemblymember David Alvarez, D-80, authored. It proposes cutting red tape that would make it easier to access $43 million in Proposition 4 bond funding for cleanup and infrastructure projects in the Tijuana River Valley.
“We’re supporting this (the bills) as is, and we’re up here early in the process, and we want to make sure this is shepherded through,” said Laura Wilkinson Sinton, the students’ mentor and founder of the nonprofit StopTheSewage.org.
Although the crisis is largely a federal problem, Wilkinson Sinton said residents need the full force of the state to get behind solutions, including declaring a state of emergency. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration has repeatedly said the sewage crisis does not qualify as an emergency under state statute. But local officials have countered that, beyond symbolism, such a declaration could unlock more funding for solutions.
“We would love for our governor to declare a state of emergency and we sincerely hope, if he can’t find the will to do that, that the next governor of the great state of California declares an emergency on day one,” she said.
Sean Wilbur agrees. He’s a senior at Coronado High School and a member of the Stop the Sewage Club.
“It’s really an all-encompassing problem,” Wilbur said.
The 18-year-old said the sewage crisis has cut one of his fondest memories of the beach: participating in Coronado’s junior lifeguard program. In recent years, sewage from Tijuana has severely polluted the water as far north as Coronado. San Diego County repeatedly closes parts of the South County shoreline as a result.
“In the summer of 2022, when participating in the junior lifeguard program, we spent two of the three weeks unable to enter the water because of the sewage,” Wilbur said. “How do we spend two weeks with these kids teaching them about water safety without getting in the water?”
For Camberos, the pollution became too much for his family to bear. They moved from Imperial Beach to south San Diego, he said.
“We decided that Imperial Beach was not a safe community for us anymore,” he said. “It wasn’t good for our health.”
He said meeting with elected officials in person and sharing their first-hand experiences with being exposed to the pollution was their way of “tapping into the empathy, trying to make it a more personal issue, trying to, like, kind of spark the emotions.”
Their efforts have not gone unnoticed. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors proclaimed Dec. 9, 2025, to be “Coronado High School Stop the Sewage Club Day” in recognition of their leadership. They also helped persuade the Coronado City Council to declare a local state of emergency over the sewage crisis.
“These kids got it going on,” Wilkinson Sinton said. “They are advocates, they are speaking up, they are courageous, they are ambitious.”
The students plan to resume their lobbying in Sacramento in April.
