S1: Hey there , San Diego , it's Andrew Bracken in for Jade Hyneman on today's show. How ongoing pollution from the Tijuana River is impacting small businesses in the South Bay. This is KPBS Midday Edition. Connecting our communities through conversation. For people who live near the Tijuana River , exposure to sewage pollution has long impacted their way of life , and people who work there aren't excluded from those impacts. Many small business owners in communities like Imperial Beach and Nestor are attributing year's long revenue losses to the sewage crisis. William Briggs wanted to hear more about their experiences directly. He's the U.S. Small Business Administration's deputy administrator , and yesterday he visited Imperial Beach to meet with business owners there. I'm joined now by Jim Hinch. He covers South County for Voice of San Diego. Hey , Jim.
S2: Hey there.
S1: Thanks for joining us today. So as you know , someone that covers the South County , a lot of you know , your beat work is around the Tijuana River Valley Valley. And this , you know , the sewage crisis there.
S2: There was a group of about half a dozen to a dozen businesses gathered at a roundtable to talk to the officials from the Small Business Administration. Um , and they described a wide range of impacts. Uh , local real estate agent , who's also the head of the Chamber of Commerce , said she's finding it almost impossible to sell houses in Imperial Beach. She said , basically , um , as she put it , when I offer up Imperial Beach as an affordable option , buyers automatically say absolutely not because they have heard about the pollution problems there. Um , a 7-Eleven franchisee said he's lost about 2 to 300 customers , uh , per day. And as he put it , he's getting a lot of hard questions from his parent company , 7-Eleven. And he said that they're just not very , uh , sympathetic to his problem , as he put it. They're a big corporation , and I really am not sure what to do at this point. Um , a local hairdresser said she's basically lost all of her , uh , tourist clientele , and it's just down to locals. So she's barely , uh , breaking , uh , breaking even. And one really interesting effect that kind of widens out from the local area. Um , there's the owner of a local brewery , Mike Hess Brewing , and they actually have multiple locations in Southern California. And the owner , Mike Hess , uh , shared that he recently has been attempting to open kind of a big flagship location in San Pedro , in a new development up in the Port of Los Angeles area. And he was all set to go and had leased a property. And when he went to banks to try to get a business loan , they looked at what's happening with his Imperial Beach business and they all turned him down. And he said he's looking at having to buy his way out of that lease and being unable to expand his business. So it was really a wide range of impacts , large and small , to a wide range of local businesses.
S1: And you mentioned this was around Imperial Beach businesses specifically. And that's such a unique beach town , kind of as you alluded to. But can you talk a little bit more about how tourism and the local economy there have been impacted in recent years ? I mean , obviously they've been dealing with pollution and the problem of closed beaches for for many years. Right. Yeah.
S2: Yeah. Well , the business owners sort of described they sort of all told a similar story , and they said if you'd gone back 5 to 10 years. They said yes , there were pollution problems , but they were not as bad. And um , they said , you know , sometime around 2019 or 2020. And I think that's probably due to , um , uh , development across the border in Mexico , in , uh , Tijuana , which has really grown explosively in recent years. Um , there's been a huge growth in the industrial sector there , and the population has grown. There's been a lot of residential development , some of it permitted and legal. Um , quite a bit of it not. Um , and as a result , the sewage infrastructure on the Mexican side of the border is quite overwhelmed , as well as some capacity problems with treatment plants here on the US side. And all those forces , I think , over the past five or so years , have combined to really up the intensity of the pollution problem in the area , and all of them described how sometime around 2020 to 2021 2022 , as the problems became more and more apparent as the smell from the pollution began to widen out and be noticeable to more and more people. And as the beaches started to be closed on more and more days , Imperial Beach soon gained a reputation , as they put it , as the most polluted beach in California. And they said as soon as word got out about that , it was as if the tourism and visitor spigot just turned off. And it is noticeable when you are down at the waterfront in Imperial Beach , which has a world renowned surf break , a beautiful pier and an amazingly scenic situation , you can just gaze over to , uh , Mexico. If you gaze the other way , you're sort of looking up , uh , like into San Diego Bay and so forth. It's a , it's it's a really lovely spot and was always known as a great surf town and an affordable California beach town. The beachfront drive there. Seacoast drive is never , ever crowded. Um , a lot of businesses have gone out of business there or are really struggling. Traffic is quite sparse. As they all pointed out. It's easy to find parking down here because there's nobody down here. And it's really true. And that has made it really hard for owners of local businesses.
S1: So let's talk more about this visit from the Small Business Administration.
S2: What was interesting to me about it is that , in a sense , this involvement of government business officials represents kind of a new chapter or a new front in this issue. Um , up to now , the issue has mostly been discussed as an environmental problem , as a public health problem. And I think some of that has to do with a lot of the activism of the previous Imperial Beach mayor and now South County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre. She herself is an environmental activist , and that's kind of the world that she moves in and thinks in. And she brought a lot of attention to those environmental problems , to those public health problems. Um , but after her departure , there was kind of a change on the city council and the city council. And Imperial Beach is now dominated either by Republicans or by independents who lean a little more conservative. And they have paid more attention to the business community in Imperial Beach. And it was actually at the behest of current mayor , um , Mitch McKay , who who actually reached out to officials at the Small Business Administration and asked if there was anything that they could do to help businesses in the community. And that's why this meeting today , uh , uh , took place.
S1: So , you know , as you mentioned , they're calling attention to these revenue losses and just the concerns businesses have around those. I'm curious , you know , have any economic impact studies been done that show how much actually has been lost and if.
S3: Not , haven't been ? Yeah.
S1:
S2: Well , and again , I think that's because up to now the focus has primarily been , uh , environmental trying to call attention just to the fact of the problem , trying to get people to pay attention , trying to call attention to the public health impacts , which are very real and very severe. Um , it should be noted that Supervisor Aguirre , one of the first things she did when she became a supervisor was , um , commission on the county side , a comprehensive economic study both in Imperial Beach and in the wider South Bay area , to to really try to pinpoint what the economic impacts are. I have a feeling it will simply document and give numbers to the anecdotal stories that I was hearing from business owners yesterday. It should also be said , though , that several of the owners , after , while talking to the federal business official , said sure , it would be great maybe if we could get some low cost loans or something like that. But at the end of the day , the only thing that is really going to help our businesses is to actually solve the pollution problem. Um , stringing us along with financial Band-Aids is not , in the end , going to be a permanent solution to what is making life so difficult.
S1: So with that in mind , I mean , what is the the current picture with those , you know , those fixes , not the Band-Aids we hear , you know , through the month. You know , month after month , it seems like.
S2: Well , the current presidential administration , under especially the Environmental Protection Agency administrator Lee Zeldin , has made at least a great public show of paying attention to this problem. They have conducted several rounds of talks with officials in Mexico.
S3: And reduced.
S1: Visited the area. Right. Yeah.
S3: Yeah.
S2: Uh , Lee Zeldin has traveled to Mexico and has what he described as some kind of hard headed talks where he really laid it on the line for Mexican , uh , officials. It should be said , though , that the list of kind of , um , actionable items that came back from that meeting was essentially a list of the items that actually had been negotiated under the Biden administration and the Trump administration is saying that it is going to hold Mexican officials feet to the fire. Um , folks on the American side , some of them are a little skeptical of that and say that officials in Mexico are good at telling people what they want to hear , um , and kind of getting themselves through , uh , negotiations. But the rubber will really hit the road with the follow up there. So far , I would not say that there has been a measurable or noticeable abatement of the problem. In fact , in recent weeks , kind of following the rains and then with all the hot weather we were having , the smell in Imperial Beach became really , really bad. The public health problems , um , spiked up , uh , even more. There were some days where kind of , like toxic or hazardous chemicals in the air really spiked. Um , and so I think that locals feel like. Despite all of the tough talk , there has not been a lot of measurable change. And ultimately , one of two things is going to happen. The the Mexican government is going to commit to fixing the infrastructure on their side and building enough capacity to treat the sewage and industrial waste that is currently pouring into the river. Year round , or the United States is going to decide to spend a great deal of money , but certainly a lot less money in comparison with what is being spent on the war in the Middle East right now , but is going to commit to spending a great deal of money to radically expand treatment capacity on the American side and simply treat everything that comes into the river , regardless of its origin. I think ultimately , those are the only two things that would permanently fix the problem.
S1: Jim , you know , as we've been talking about , you know , good part of your beat is , is navigating this sewage crisis and all the ways it impacts life in the South Bay and across our region.
S4:
S2: That a kind of a wider story in South County is that this is an aspirational part of San Diego County. This is a place that has felt that for years it has been disregarded , that it has been considered sort of the lower income and less glamorous part of San Diego County. And there is a really determined effort on the part of many of the cities in the area , especially , say , the city of Chula Vista , to put those days behind. And they have greenlighted and in some cases built a whole series of , you know , big signature developments and really kind of try to put a stake in the ground as a serious center for tourism. And , um , uh , business and kind of a place where , where , where people with aspirations can live and find a home and earn a good living and take a great vacation. So all of that is happening , but there is a shadow over all of it , which is that the region , not just the city of Imperial Beach , but the whole region is starting to get this reputation as being this extremely polluted place. And I think it is causing more and more people to feel really upset.
S1: I've been speaking with Jim Hinch. He's South County reporter for Voice of San Diego. Jim , thanks so much for joining us today. Sure.
S2: Sure. Thank you.
S5: That's our show for today. I'm your host , Jade Hindman. Thanks for tuning in to Midday Edition. Be sure to have a great day on purpose , everyone.
