San Diego lifeguards patrol beaches from nine permanent lifeguard stations (Ocean Beach, South Mission Beach, Mission Beach, North Pacific Beach, Pacific. Ocean Beach · Mission Bay Beaches · Black's Beach · Beach Photo Gallery. Coronado and Imperial Beach have been closed for weeks, and the closure is likely to continue for months. New San Diego County Water Tests Could Cause More South Bay Beaches to Close This Summer Due to Harmful Contaminants in Water.
The picturesque coastal community of Coronado and the working class of Imperial Beach could be on track for a major reckoning with wastewater continuing to spill over the border from Tijuana. Beach closures, once largely considered a winter event, now appear to be on the verge of becoming a year-round phenomenon in San Diego's South Bay. However, that's not because transboundary pollution from Baja California's overloaded and crumbling wastewater system has increased dramatically, county officials say. It's because the ocean is more polluted than previously thought.
An avalanche of recently closed shorelines followed the May 5 implementation of a new DNA-based water quality testing system, nearly a decade after creation. Coronado beaches have been closed for 17 days since new tests began early last month. The south shore of Imperial Beach, which has historically suffered much greater impacts from wastewater pollution, was immediately closed and has not yet been reopened. Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey questioned whether the tests really indicated a new understanding of sea conditions.
Dedina and others expressed concern that the closures could have a widespread economic and social impact, potentially shutting down programs such as youth first responders and YMCA surf camps and interfering with Navy training operations. Naval Special Warfare Command, whose base is located on the south end of Coronado and is the training home of the San Diego Navy SEALs, did not return requests for comment. The closures are necessary to protect bathers from dangerously high levels of bacteria and viruses, according to county public health officials. Swimmers who ignore the restrictions could be at risk for diarrhea, fever, respiratory diseases, meningitis and even paralysis.
San Diego is the first coastal county in the nation to institute a federally approved water quality testing system that uses DNA technology, officials said. Environmental Protection Agency, California Department of Public Health, and UC San Diego researchers. For years, environmental regulators thought that wastewater spilling over the border with Mexico was largely the result of heavy winter rains that dragged runoff and contaminated wastewater across the Tijuana River channel into the Imperial Beach estuary. However, recent studies by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UCSD and Stanford University have identified a missing wastewater facility in Tijuana as a major source of pollution.
The San Antonio de los Buenos wastewater treatment plant in Punta Bandera is estimated to dump up to 35 million gallons of untreated wastewater per day into the Pacific Ocean. When ocean currents move northward, known as “southern swells,” they can carry plumes of faeces and other pollution north to Coronado. These conditions prevail in spring and summer, health officials say. Editor Andrew Dyer contributed to this report.
Get top Union-Tribune headlines in your inbox Monday through Friday mornings, including top news, local, sports, business, entertainment and opinion. Occasionally you may receive promotional content from the San Diego Union-Tribune. Its goal is to advance the County's goals of combating climate change and reducing waste. Storms sometimes flood streets north of Mission, near the beach, but the Coastal Commission has concerns about the city's drainage plan.
Newsom wants to keep California's last nuclear plant open for a few more years, but opponents say it should be shut down as scheduled. Brian Olney takes over the Helix Water District at a time of historic drought Samples collected by Surfrider, an environmental group, were evaluated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. The third sign is a shutdown, which will take effect if there is wastewater in the water, and will close the beach. Bailey condemned the sudden shutdowns in local news, telling Voice of San Diego that he got to the point where he told the county he would personally tear off the sand shutdown signs.
During the pandemic, there was an unprecedented decline in tourism dollars, and yet San Diego is still here. Test results showed dangerously high levels of bacteria and viruses, forcing the closure of South San Diego beaches, from Imperial Beach to Coronado, home to one of America's most popular coastal resorts and training station for U. But the county is letting the public choose whether to swim in the water anyway, taking the position that it cannot close beaches based solely on water quality test results. A study by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography recently confirmed the link between Punta Bandera and wastewater pollution on Southern California beaches in summer.
But tourism in general pays low wages that are increasingly out of step with living costs in San Diego. Bailey said he wants the County Board of Supervisors to order the public health department to continue testing beach water in the previous way, under the test that is less sensitive, but which historically had rarely issued beach notices or closures in Coronado in the summer. Under the above method, tests generally showed unsafe water quality in the south of the county during the winter rainy season, when the sewage-plagued Tijuana River filled with stormwater and pollution, spilling along Imperial Beach just miles from Coronado. Coronado beaches closed four more times in the following weeks, alarming elected leaders there as the city faced the prospect of closed beaches over the holiday weekend.
Summer beach closures cascaded over Imperial Beach and Coronado like never before after May 5, when San Diego County implemented a water quality test, the first in the country, that counts bacteria by their DNA. San Diego lifeguards patrol beaches from nine permanent lifeguard stations (Ocean Beach, South Mission Beach, Mission Beach, North Pacific Beach, Pacific Beach, Children's Pool, La Jolla Cove, La Jolla Shores, Black's Beach) and dozens of seasonal stations during the summer. . .
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