Local leaders are putting the brakes on a South Bay landfill project that’s been in the works for a decade and a half.  

Fifteen years ago, a ballot measure proposing plans for the East Otay Mesa Recycling Collection Center and Landfill passed with 84 percent of the vote.    

Now, state Sen. Steve Padilla says voters weren’t well-informed about plans in an area that already faces severe pollution. He’s calling for restrictions, including additional public hearings and assurances that the landfill won’t worsen environmental conditions in nearby communities. 

Padilla introduced a bill that would ban the state from issuing a waste discharge permit for a landfill until the local agency that oversees waste facilities has held a public hearing on the project and certified that it won’t harm an environmentally burdened community. 

“In our community, a brand-new landfill is currently being planned near the Tijuana River — one of the most polluted waterways in the state and the nation,” Padilla said in a statement to Voice of San Diego.  “SB 594 would give communities like ours that already face excessive levels of pollution the opportunity to have their voices heard when a landfill is proposed in their backyard — even when developers have taken steps to avoid local review.” 

What are the environmental risks? David Wick, president and CEO of landfill developer National Enterprises, Inc., said Padilla’s proposal is overkill, because his company is already undergoing exhaustive environmental review.  

Before the company can start construction, their project must pass muster through the California Environmental Quality Act and National Environmental Policy Act, both of which require public comment. Plus, it needs water, air and waste permits from numerous state and local agencies.  

Wick said there’s no evidence trash from the site would pollute the Tijuana River Valley and said the greater risk would be killing his project. 

“What’s occurred is the existing three landfills in our county have become mountains of trash,” Wick said. “That is the existing hazard. That is the environmental injustice.” 

County supervisor candidate and Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre, who has long battled the Tijuana River sewage crisis, is backing Padilla’s bill, saying South Bay can’t sustain any potential pollution from the proposed landfill. 

“Putting it within the boundaries of the Tijuana watershed and exacerbating the threat that the Tijuana River poses for the entire South Bay is ludicrous right now,” she told me. 

She said the landfill would displace sensitive habitat and disputes Wick’s claim that it wouldn’t harm the Tijuana River Valley. 

“As long as it’s within the boundaries of the watershed itself it does have the capacity to drain into the river,” Aguirre said.  

Does San Diego Need More Space for Trash? Opponents also argue that the new landfill isn’t needed. State environmental laws brought waste disposal down by almost a quarter between 2025 and 2020, the county reported in 2022. 

A letter from CalEPA to Padilla last year stated that the region has enough waste disposal capacity for the next 15 years. It estimates that increased conservation, recycling and composting should keep trash under control until 2053.  

The landfill could be a dividing issue in the race for San Diego County Supervisor District 1, where Aguirre is competing against Chula Vista Mayor John McCann.  

McCann thinks the region needs the new facility. He points out trash collection rates are rising, and the existing Otay Mesa landfill is set to close in 2030. 

“As we are seeing major trash rate increases in San Diego, without being able to build a state of the art environmentally safe landfill, located away from neighborhoods, residents will see trash rates skyrocket and the community will lose hundreds of local jobs,” he told me. 

This is Padilla’s second stab at restricting the project. Last year he proposed a similar bill, more specifically targeted at the East Otay Mesa project. It would have prohibited a regional water board from issuing a waste discharge permit for a new landfill in the Tijuana River Valley. 

That bill failed on the Assembly floor near the end of last year’s legislative session, amid a feud with Assemblymember David Alvarez, who said he wanted the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board to have the final say on the landfill. 

Oddly, votes in favor of that bill were more than triple those against it. So how did it fail? Twenty-eight Democrats voted in favor of Padilla’s restrictions, and Alvarez and seven Republicans voted no. The rest of the Assembly didn’t vote, leaving it short of a majority. 

This year’s bill passed the Senate Committee on Environmental Quality on April 2. If legislators bother to vote this time and it passes, it would apply to the East Otay Mesa facility and other potential landfills in high pollution areas. 

In Other Tijuana River News: The Tijuana River gained a dubious distinction as the second most polluted river in the country, the nonprofit American Rivers announced this week.  

“The polluted water in the Tijuana River aerosolizes as sea spray, polluting air quality,” and increasing health problems and emergency room visits among nearby residents, the organization stated. 

It’s a political issue as well as a public health problem, the organization wrote in a statement about the list, calling on the Trump administration to declare a federal emergency for the river. 

San Diego County Board Chair Wants to Tap Rainy Day Fund 

San Diego’s State of the County Address is typically an ode to the county’s accomplishments on issues such as homelessness, housing and mental health.  This year’s address by Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer was more like a rally for MAGA resistance.  

Our Lisa Halverstadt reported on the speech, held at the San Diego Natural History Museum in Balboa Park. Lawson-Remer threw shade at oligarchs and billionaires, and called for the county to dig into its reserves to make up money lost to drastic federal spending cuts. 

She wants to use more than $100 million in reserves to fund a new county public health lab and clean up sewage pollution in South Bay. Any chance at reserve spending will probably depend on the outcome of the District 1 Supervisor race, which will determine which party controls the board. 

The Sacramento Report runs every Friday. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org. 

The post Sacramento Report: San Diego Senator Seeks to Kill East Otay Mesa Landfill appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

San Diego is releasing a new batch of trash and recycling bins equipped with RFID (radio frequency identification) tags as part of its shift to a fee-based trash pickup system for single-family homes. 

The RFID chips are already embedded in the city’s green bins for organic waste. Now, they’ll be included in the new black and blue bins as well. The city plans to assign each chip to a specific address and use that information to record when and where the bin is picked up. 

The chips do not record or send live location data. Instead, they transmit a unique identifier to RFID readers on garbage trucks. When a truck lifts and empties the container, the chip communicates with the reader to log the time and date of collection. This information will be stored in a database, similar to the city’s Get It Done platform. 

A spokesperson for the city said the technology will help trash pickup run more smoothly. They can track which bins belong to what homes, like when someone throws hazardous waste in the wrong bin. Last week, two separate fires broke out in collection trucks because of a lithium battery and a patio heater. According to a city Facebook post, Fire-Rescue crews put both out fast, but the city warned these incidents are dangerous.  

“The RFIDs do not track anything, but the readers will be able to record which containers were collected. So, if the City learns that a particular truck’s load contains hazardous materials, the City will know which containers were picked up, as long as those containers had working RFIDs and as long as the truck’s reader detected the RFID when the container was emptied,” wrote Kelly Terry, senior public information officer for the city. 

The rollout comes as San Diego officials set out to charge single-family homeowners a special fee for trash collection. Earlier proposals set the monthly fee as high as $53. Following public backlash over the price, the city recently revised the proposed rate to $47.59 per month for full-service customers. The fee would increase gradually, reaching $59.42 by July 2027 under the revised proposal. Smaller bin users would pay less. 

San Diego’s new trash fee would still be among the most expensive in the county. It would be higher than rates in cities like La Mesa ($27.53), Carlsbad ($30.67), and Chula Vista ($36.80), but lower than Long Beach ($67.63), San Francisco ($121.93) and San Jose ($160.35). 

The City Council is expected to vote on setting a public hearing date for the updated fees today.   

The post New Fee Means San Diego’s Trash Bins Are About to Get Smarter Too appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Last year the Environmental Health Coalition received a $20 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to improve air quality, build green spaces and add electric transit to some of San Diego’s most polluted neighborhoods. 

Organizers were excited to get the award, which supplemented state funds for projects in Barrio Logan, National City and other communities exposed to pollution from truck traffic and industrial pollution. 

Everything went as expected on the start date Jan. 6, but by Jan. 28 the payment system for the grant was frozen after President Donald Trump cancelled climate action funding.  

“We are incurring costs, but we are unable to tap into the funds that are contractually obligated to us,” Amy Castañeda, policy co-director for the coalition, told me. “We continue to spend money with no hope that the funds will be reinstated.” 

Attacks on climate action: San Diego organizations are grappling with Trump’s plans to claw back federal climate funding and attack state greenhouse gas reduction laws, in a blitz that leaves local climate goals in doubt. With San Diego cities already falling behind on their targets, however, it might also provide cover for those shortfalls.  

On Jan. 20, Trump signed an order cancelling federal funding for climate programs and compelling production of oil, gas, coal, nuclear and other energy sources.  

Then he signed another this week that takes aim at state climate programs, including California’s cap and trade, the state’s market for reducing greenhouse gases.  

Legal experts say the attempt to kill state climate laws is an overreach that’s likely to fail. California’s cap-and-trade program creates a market that limits overall greenhouse emissions, but lets companies buy and sell carbon credits. The state uses that money to pay for renewable energy, alternative fuel transportation and other projects. 

Carbon credit auctions have brought in $28.3 billion to the state Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund since the program started in 2012, according to the California Air Resources Board. Nicole Capretz, CEO of Climate Action Campaign, said this is Trump’s second stab at ending the program. 

“He already tried to dismantle California’s cap and trade and he was unsuccessful,” in his first term, she told me. “I think California is feeling pretty secure in their cap-and-trade law. It is a massive revenue generator for the state and funds a whole suite of programs.” 

But reversing funding approved during the Biden administration is trickier. Trump’s day one order calls for “terminating the Green New Deal” by halting grants for electric vehicle charging stations and other infrastructure authorized in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. 

It’s been an ordeal for the Environmental Health Coalition, which has struggled to access money, plan projects, manage staffing and even communicate with the EPA. 

For a few weeks in February and early March the funding was restored, Castañeda said. Then it shut off again. The EPA project manager for the grant has cancelled every monthly check-in. 

“We’re doing the work but have zero communication and we’re in limbo now,” Castañeda told me. 

The coalition has contacted local lawmakers and is asking state officials to backfill the missing money with funds from Proposition 4, the $10 billion state climate bond measure that passed in November. If the coalition can’t get grant funding restored, they’ll have to look at staff cuts, Castañeda said. 

“We’re considering layoffs, we’re considering furloughs and staff time reductions, because we cannot sustain that big a hit,” she said. 

Local governments and advocacy groups have challenged Trump’s authority to cancel spending Congress authorized, arguing that only Congress – not the president – has the power of the purse. Those cases are making their way through the courts, but in the meantime, Trump is slashing staff and funding at federal agencies. 

“This is more of a bullying tactic than anything else, meant to silence, to intimidate, to chill any new actions on climate,” Capretz said. 

What does this mean for public climate action programs in San Diego? Those include the city’s Climate Action Plan, the county’s Regional Decarbonization Framework, which lays out countywide choices for transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and many other municipal climate action plans. 

I called San Diego County Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer, who has been leading the county’s climate action efforts. Her office said she didn’t have any comment; things are moving too fast and she’s waiting to see how it shakes out. 

Environmental leaders say the cuts could throw a monkey wrench in local efforts to slash greenhouse gas emissions, which are already behind schedule. The Climate Action Coalition’s annual report card grades the county’s nine biggest cities on their climate progress. It gave mixed reviews last year. The report card urged cities to set annual benchmarks for greenhouse gas reductions and noted that California needs to triple its rate of greenhouse gas cuts to effectively fight climate change. 

San Diego has done a good job promoting renewable energy through community choice programs that offer a greener portfolio of energy sources than utility companies, Capretz said. But it’s behind the curve on electrifying buildings, switching to electric vehicles and cutting the amount that people drive. 

Could the Trump onslaught offer cover for cities to let their climate plans slide? Maybe, Capretz said. 

“It would be an excuse not to take action because of the threat by the federal government, or it could dampen political will,” she said. 

But she thinks California’s vast size and economic clout give us options. 

“California is going to have to invest more into climate solutions and backfill what the federal government will say it won’t fund,” she said. “We should have more ballot measures and redirect more funding so we don’t slow down progress. If you’re the fifth largest economy in the world you can act independently.” 

How are Education Cuts Landing in San Diego? 

Our education reporter Jackob McWhinney and investigative reporter Will Huntsberry attended a San Diego event with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, who insisted that the elimination of the federal Department of Education means cuts to bureaucracy, not school funding.  

Last week, McWhinney wrote that UCSD could lose hundreds of millions of dollars from Trump cuts to higher education. The administration is slashing research grants for clinical trials on HIV and AIDS, and studies on how domestic violence affects pregnant women. That’s on top of the state’s plans to cut 8 percent across the UC system. All told, UC San Diego could lose half a billion dollars, UCSD Chancellor Pradeep Khosla warned. 

For more on the school front, check out this CalMatters story on California’s lawsuit to reclaim hundreds of millions of dollars in pandemic education funds that the Trump administration cancelled.  

The Sacramento Report runs every Friday. Do you have tips, ideas or questions? Send them to me at deborah@voiceofsandiego.org. 

The post Sacramento Report: How San Diego Is Coping with Trump’s Slash-and-Burn Strategy for Climate Funding appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

People in San Diego are already feeling higher costs from food, housing and electricity. Now, water rates will also soar.

This week, the San Diego City Council voted to approve a 5.5% water rate increase. It was tough and a couple of the councilmembers couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

“I will not be able to support today’s actions because I simply cannot justify charging water customers more than they already pay,” said Councilmember Vivian Moreno.

Unfortunately, it was just the small first increase of many to come in the next four years.

By the numbers

The city of San Diego last year projected water rates will rise 61% through 2029, adding about $57 per month to the average water bill. That’s almost $700 per year.

That’s the optimistic scenario. And it’s not just the city. Rates will rise in other parts of the county as well.

Why is this happening?

The San Diego region imports most of its water. And just like the water itself flows from the north, the water rate increases are flowing south as well.

Why is this happening? In part, it’s because we use less water. But that means we have to pay more to cover debts.

The city of San Diego purchases most of its water from the San Diego County Water Authority. And the Water Authority buys most of its water from the Metropolitan Water District.

Both those agencies have borrowed money to build infrastructure such as pipes, pumps and dams. This creates an enormous demand for electricity to run the whole system. Electricity is much more expensive now.

But San Diego has also itself taken on three huge projects that we’re paying for.

• First, we bought a bunch of water from farmers in the Imperial Valley more than 20 years ago at a very high cost.
• Second, we built a seawater desalination facility and agreed to buy the water for decades at a much higher price than even the imported water.
• Third, San Diego and Los Angeles are both building large sewage recycling facilities. That will eventually lessen the need for imported water but they are very expensive projects now.

The Metropolitan Water District also wants to build an enormous tunnel to help bring water safely from Northern California. That plan could cost $20 billion and the bill would flow to ratepayers in San Diego.

Looking ahead

Leaders here hope to sell all the water we have bought to provide some relief. But if they don’t do something soon, the backlash could lead to some extreme solutions.

San Diego City Councilmember Marni Von Wilpert shocked observers when she suggested last week that the city withdraw completely from the County Water Authority or at least refuse to pay them.

“I believe we could send a very strong message and vote no, and not pay the increased rates, bring them to the table, say we’re not going to accept this,” she said. “I doubt my colleagues are going to agree with me, but in litigation that’s what we did all the time.”

The post Why It Matters: Why Are San Diego Water Rates About to Soar? appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Never again will crowds of migrants storm up the Tijuana River channel to cross into the United States like they did in 2018. 

Their way is now blocked.  

A piece of border wall President Donald Trump started in his first term is almost finished. Built as a bridge over the river for patrolling border agents, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, designed this particular piece of wall like the entrance to a castle. One thousand feet of 30-foot-high steel gates cut across the notoriously polluted river’s concrete channel. Border agents are supposed to raise the gates before it rains.  

If they fail – say the power goes out, the gates won’t open and border agents can’t lift them manually – the force of billions of gallons of rainwater mixed with Tijuana sludge would smash against the wall-turned-dam, causing the raging river to back up over its levees and consume downtown Tijuana.  

That’s largely why this piece of wall has been incredibly controversial. CBP pushed forward with construction, even as Mexican officials alleged it violated multiple treaties and engineers warned the wall could cause catastrophic flooding of downtown Tijuana and San Ysidro on the U.S. side, according to records obtained by Voice of San Diego through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.  

Those records, which include hundreds of email exchanges, show the treaty violation allegations sent panic through the State Department. Government lawyers disagreed on whether the U.S. needed Mexico’s permission to build a wall through a river shared by two countries.  

At times, the International Boundary and Water Commission or IBWC – a key federal agency that owns and manages border lands on behalf of the U.S. — was caught off guard when CBP contractors began moving earth in the river channel the IBWC is charged with managing. And, throughout its construction, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency relentlessly fought the wall which required very little study of impacts to the environment.  

Eventually, the IBWC and State Department rolled over on their concerns. The gated wall should be completed by March, John Mennell, a CBP spokesperson, told Voice of San Diego on Feb. 4. It’s been a dry 2025 so far. Whether the gates withstand future storms made worse by a changing climate has yet to be tested.  

Under Pressure: National Security Versus Flood Prevention 

A grossly underfunded federal agency, the IBWC was the only thing standing in CBP’s way of finishing the project. The Tijuana River and its levees are IBWC’s turf, so the burden of ensuring the river wouldn’t breach its channel with a new wall in the way was on IBWC’s engineers. 

There was enormous pressure to approve the project Trump’s first-term Homeland Security Secretary Kristen Nielsen said back in 2019 was necessary and in the interest of national security. 

Before the new wall, people crossing into the United States regularly walked up the river channel to surrender themselves to CBP officers on the other side. If you stand in the parking lot of Las Americas Premium Outlets in San Ysidro, where the border wall used to end, silver emergency thermal blankets worn by crossers litter the levee. Border agents complained in the past about getting sick after chasing people through the river water that’s tainted by untreated urban sewage from Tijuana. Then in November of 2018 during a surge of migration from Central America, hundreds of people tried to cross into the United States all at once through the channel as border agents fired tear gas upon them. 

“The opening in the border barrier in this location was a funnel point for illegal activity and a safety hazard for agents and illegal aliens due to the heavily polluted conditions of the river,” Mennell at CBP wrote in an email. 

Nielsen rushed wall construction projects like this one by waiving over 30 federal laws, including the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act. President Joe Biden stalled the project and others like it in 2021, but allowed some – including the Tijuana River project — to resume again in 2022.  

Once the EPA learned the wall was back on the table, staff stepped in to prove erecting a barrier in a temperamental river was a bad idea. The agency hired a group of scientists to study the wall’s flooding effect left by the sweeping waiver. The final report showed building a wall would harm both countries, even under modest flood scenarios.  

In June of 2022, Dan Sainz, the IBWC’s liaison to Washington D.C., emailed his colleagues warnings from Doug Liden, an environmental engineer with the EPA who has worked on the Tijuana River issue for years. Liden flagged for the U.S. Consulate how CBP’s barriers caused major problems for both countries in the past.  

In 2019, CBP failed to hoist border gates at a drainage tunnel built through the border which caused massive flooding in Tijuana, triggering rescues and compromising key Mexican plumbing infrastructure that keeps sewage from contaminating U.S. beaches on the other side. And in 2014, sections of border wall designed to let water pass between Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora in Mexico killed two people and caused millions of dollars in damage.   

Congressman Juan Vargas — a Democrat who represents California’s 52nd District – asked Biden’s Secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, to stop the river wall in an Oct. 4, 2022 letter.  

“We have been told it is common for pieces of equipment to be stolen, causing the project to malfunction. We have also been told that CBP has frequently experienced gates jamming and malfunctioning,” Vargas wrote.” In this part of the river, any kind of malfunction would prove disastrous to the Border Patrol agents and other employees trying to find a resolution.”  

Nine days later in a letter to the IBWC, Adriana Reséndez Maldonado, in charge of Mexico’s version of IBWC called CILA, alleged the wall violated a 1977 agreement between the two countries as well as treaties from 1944 and 1889. She asked the IBWC to intervene and put a stop to its construction.  

“Mexico is against this proposed wall over the Tijuana River,” she wrote to her counterpart, Maria-Elena Giner, commissioner of the IBWC. “The negative effects … include floods, damages and loss of life in Mexican territory.” 

Mexico hasn’t changed its position since. In a December interview,  Alejandro Morales, the Mexican secretary of CILA, said the country has “always been opposed to the project. 

“A barrier that impedes a natural river channel, well, of course there’s going to be consequences,” Morales said.  

Reséndez Maldonado’s 2022 letter sent IBWC’s lawyers scrambling to figure out whether rubber stamping CBP’s border wall broke 133 years of promises with Mexico.  

At issue was whether Minute 258, an international agreement the countries signed in 1977, required Mexico’s approval for the U.S. Government to construct a security structure in the Tijuana River. The answer is yes, wrote Rebecca Rizzuti, the IBWC’s deputy chief counsel, to Elena-Giner. 

But in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an end to the Mexican-American war, both countries also reserved the right to fortify and secure its borders at any point, Giner wrote to CBP, notifying the agency of Mexico’s disapproval.  

The IBWC apparently never resolved the issue. In responses to questions about treaty violations from Voice of San Diego, spokesman Frank Fisher wrote that IBWC engineers determined the river wall wouldn’t obstruct flooding waters through the river channel when the gates are open.  

Still, the 1977 agreement is pretty clear: Mexico and the United States decided the construction of fences or other works in the channel of the Tijuana River would have to be approved by both countries’ boundary and water commissions (IBWC and CILA) to ensure they don’t “obstruct the flow of water across the boundary.”  

“Mexico has a strong claim that it needs to be consulted on anything that would affect the movement of water,” said Stephen Mumme, a political science professor at Colorado State University and an expert on Tijuana River policy.  

This isn’t the first time Mexico’s alleged treaty-breaking related to United States border wall projects, Mumme said. But the country’s leadership hasn’t been willing to take the fight to the next level: Challenge the United States before an international court of justice.  

And there’s another broken treaty Mexico has yet to throw down, in Mumme’s view. In 1970, when the countries settled boundary disputes over the Rio Grande and Colorado River, it created consequences for promise breakers: If what either country builds in a river channel harms the other, the offending government has to remove it and pay for all the damage it caused.  

“Mexico is holding back, but that’s the next piece in the arsenal. That’s where they clearly have another card to play,” Mumme said.   

So far 2025’s been a pretty dry year for San Diego and northern Baja California. The river gate, and a complex set of agreements the IBWC forged with CBP to operate and maintain it, have yet to face a first test. 

“I know CBP is saying, we’ve got gates, we’ll take care of it. But that remains to be seen,” Mumme said. 

If the Gates Fail to Open 

CBP needed IBWC’s signature on a set of rules dividing responsibilities for how the wall would work before it could start building. The agency’s contractors planned to begin drilling in the riverbed on Dec. 7, 2022, read an email with the CBP staff names redacted. Any delay, they wrote, would cause extra costs for CBP. 

“You have my commitment to move as quickly as possible on my end,” Elena-Giner, the IBWC leader, wrote back.  

Chris McHone, with the State Department, assured his colleagues the agreements would “help put to rest the idea that this project is going to lead to widespread flooding.”  

“(It should) give everyone some confidence that they have a written commitment from DHS they can use to ensure the barrier is maintained and operated as designed,” McHone wrote. 

The IBWC prepared to greenlight the wall.  

In a Dec. 2 memo, Sally Spener, the IBWC’s foreign affairs secretary, told Jesus Luevano, the Mexican secretary, that it was up to his country to provide data or documentation showing the border wall would cause a flood in his country. CBP and IBWC had aligned on findings from a hydraulic study that apparently showed the wall wouldn’t increase the risk of flooding. The message to Mexico was: If you’re so worried about flooding, prove us wrong.  

Mexico didn’t get back to the United States with its data until February, but it didn’t matter. The project was already a-go. The IBWC inked its agreements with CBP on Jan. 26. 

From that point on it seemed everyone had trouble keeping track of CBP’s progress on the wall. At one point, the IBWC was caught off guard when bulldozers from CBP contractors began moving earth in the river channel. 

Construction began sometime around March 17, 2023, which also surprised the Department of State.  

“TJ River Barrier Now Under Construction (?!?)” read the subject line of an email from McHone, though the text of the email was redacted. Sainz, IBWC’s D.C. liaison, asked the IBWC if it knew anything about CBP’s construction plans. Morgan Rogers, IBWC’s operations manager in San Diego at the time, said contractors were trying to drill into the riverbed to fill the wall’s foundation but spring rains caused delays.  

Around that time, the EPA began to push back claiming all the flood modeling CBP had done was wrong. The agency didn’t consider 40-years-worth of sand and sediment that had piled up over time, which limited how much water the levees could hold before topping over even without a big wall in the middle.  

As private contractors, which included Kiewit and Michael Baker International, began to dig into the river bottom in April, the EPA released its studies showing the flood risks.  

By May, the State Department still wasn’t clear whether the project would flood downtown Tijuana during some of the most intense rain scenarios, like a 500-year storm which means there’s a 0.2 percent chance of a flood that large happening every year. The IBWC leaned on the EPA’s study which showed the wall could raise flood levels almost 1 to 4 feet in Tijuana. 

The CBP promised that some gates in the wall were designed to break away during a less-intense, 100-year storm – the worst case scenario Border Patrol looked at. Break away gates should prevent the barrier from acting like a dam walling up water and debris.  

Then the wall got its first test: Hurricane Hilary came barreling toward southern California and northern Mexico. IBWC engineer Padinare Unnikrishna sent an email at noon on Friday Aug. 18, 2023, presumably to Border Patrol or its contractors though the recipients were redacted, warning  Border Patrol it left construction material lying in the riverbed.  

Two hours and no response later, deputy chief counsel Rizzuti sent another email.  

“Just FYI – there is a hurricane approaching,” she wrote. “I think your contractor has piled sediment on the U.S. side and there is concern that those could obstruct the high flows expected in the river tonight.”  

At 3:45 p.m., Border Patrol’s let IBWC know their contractors were moving their equipment out of the river channel.  

The storm hit Mexico by Sunday morning. Luckily it didn’t bring doom to either side of the border. 

Six months later, the border wall faced a second test: the Jan. 22 storm which devastated and displaced thousands in southern San Diego.  

Staff from EPA sent photographs of the full, raging river that almost swallowed the bridge’s pylons to the IBWC. Days after the rain, IBWC engineer Apurba Borah forwarded those photos to Paul Enriquez and Timothy Quillman with Border Patrol. That the wall wouldn’t worsen flooding was still in doubt. 

“The flow is estimated to be around 25-year flood. Just wondering if the structure with fully open position will allow passage of a 100-year flood without obstructing,” Borah wrote.  

CBP redacted the names of the respondents who assured IBWC that water from this storm and a worse one would pass below the top of the wall’s upper bridge deck. The water did clear the upper deck – just barely.  

Though the wall now stands near-completion, the winter of 2025 has so far proved to be very dry. Whether it’ll be able to withstand worse storms than it’s already faced remains to be seen.  

Mexico never did give their blessing to the river border wall, the IBWC confirmed to Voice. But the agency doesn’t believe Minute 258 or the other treaties Mexico alleged the United States broke apply to the river barrier as designed. A lot of that depends on whether CBP opens these gates according to plan.  

Reporter Vicente Calderón of Tijuanapress.com contributed to this report.  

The post Mexico Said River Border Wall Broke Treaties. The US Built it Anyway. appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Charles Koeleman probably helped save his canyon-top Alvarado Estates neighborhood from burning down during the Fairmount fire on Halloween last year.  

The entire north-facing canyonside he can see from his back porch across Montezuma Road is completely torched. The day of the fire, Koeleman spotted flames licking up his side of the canyon near a neighbors’ home and rushed to douse it with a hose.  

“All of a sudden I saw a little trail of smoke,” Koeleman said. “My son took over the hose and went down the canyon and I turned on all my sprinklers.”  

The canyon below Alvarado Estates escaped flame, this time. 

Koeleman set up a sprinkler system on his roof, hires help to cut down canyon brush to his property line, and keeps multiple garden hoses and fire extinguishers within reach to battle flames. By all accounts, Koeleman was doing everything right – and the local Alvarado Estates Fire Council, a citizens group set up to address fire risk in the neighborhood, used his home as a model for others.  

But last week, Assistant Fire Marshal Alex Kane gave Koeleman a sobering look at all the ways his home was still vulnerable. Kane’s visit was part of a new program by the city of San Diego’s Fire-Rescue called the – deep breath – home ignition zone defensible space inspection. San Diegans will be able to sign up for one around July 1 on the fire department’s website. It’s just an assessment. The fire department doesn’t issue citations or do anything punitive. It’s all an effort to bolster the community’s knowledge about what they can do to protect theirs and others’ property. 

Some highlights that surprised me, a person with limited experience living in wildfire country. 

Zero to five feet: While not legally required, yet, fire departments are beginning to regularly advise homeowners that the best thing you can do to prevent homes catching fire is keep a five foot perimeter from your home’s exterior completely fire proofed. That means: No green landscaping, no mulch, no vines or trees or vegetation – however artfully designed – should be growing within that five-foot perimeter. Switch your mulch to crushed granite. Rip out those decorative Italian cypress, or at the very least, space them out and away from that five-foot perimeter.  

Door mats: When the fire department issues a red flag warning – meaning conditions are ripe for wildfires to spark and spread aka high heat, low humidity and high winds – bring your door mat inside.  

“When the wind’s blowing embers will come and eddy around a doormat and can start a fire underneath your door,” Kane said.  

He put it this way – any spot around the home where leaves accumulate during a breeze is also a spot prone to collecting flying embers during a fire.  

Wood fences: A wooden fence within five feet of the home is considered a pathway for fire to travel down. Vinyl is better as it’s more prone to melt versus smolder and fuel fire like wood, but the best is steel for fencing the last five feet near the home. 

Cars and trash cans: During red flag warnings, move cars 10 feet away from the home. People who have RVs outside the home often render their homes indefensible because they’re so prone to catching fire, Kane said. Trash cans are also sitting ducks full of combustible fuel people typically roll close to their homes when not in use. So better to roll them to the end of a driveway or to the street.  

Sheds and accessible dwelling units: Kane said these should sit 30 feet from the home if possible to keep flame from spreading to the main house.  

Grass or artificial turf: You may notice a pattern beginning to form here, but while lawn and artificial turf weren’t high on Kane’s list of concerns, if it’s within five feet of the home it could become an issue. 

Outdoor cushions: Statistically cushions within five feet of the home could be another fuel source for embers to land and start a fire.  

Environment Report Hibernates Until June 

I’m having a baby, so the Environment Report will be paused until June when I reemerge from the fog of raising a newborn. Wish me luck.  

Around the Empire 

• In other fire-related news, the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department says it’s the first in the nation to try a new citrus-based fire prevention retardant called Citrotech. The department’s focusing on egress or escape routes and encampments, which tend to attract people again even after the city clears them out. (Union-Tribune) 
• San Diego County’s supervisors plans to spend $15 million on a new helicopter equipped to fly at night flying capabilities to help boost wildfire preparedness. Except, another helicopter they bought in 2023 with the same capabilities has apparently been out of commission for eight months for maintenance. I plan to spend some time trying to get a ride along on a helicopter night flight because it sounds cool. (CBS 8) 
• An Imperial County judge cleared the way for one of the world’s largest lithium mines to move forward just south of the Salton Sea. Nonprofit community organizations sued over the project’s environmental review claiming not enough had been studied on the project’s potential effects on water supply and air quality. Those groups could appeal the decision to a higher court. (Calmatters) 
• The Carlsbad Unified School District passed a clean air and energy resolution committing to become a fossil fuel-free district by 2035. (Climate Action Campaign) 
• A team at Scripps Institution of Oceanography produced its first fertilized eggs of an endangered native sunflower sea star after a mysterious wasting disease almost wiped out the population. While it looks a little too much like the facehugger in Alien, we’re glad science can step in and regrow dying species which help keep sea urchin populations at bay and  scientists hope could one day be reintroduced in California waters. (National Geographic)  
• Portions of one of San Diego’s first huge aqueducts, built in the 1940s to get Colorado River to the region, is undergoing some rehab. It’ll be shut down Feb. 25 to March 5 potentially impacting parts of the cities of Poway, San Diego, and the Helix and Ramona water districts. (Fox 5) 
• And my colleagues in the San Diego enviro space explore what might happen to offshore wind projects and lithium mining following various executive orders and financial reviews from President Donald Trump. (inewsource and Union-Tribune) 

The post Environment Report: How to Keep Your House From Burning Down appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Already facing a $258 million budget deficit, San Diego City Council members spent an hour Tuesday night delivering an unprecedented public bashing of the region’s main water seller for ever-climbing costs.  

Water purchases from the San Diego County Water Authority are the city of San Diego’s second-largest expense and its price increase this year was double what the agency once forecasted. Though funded by San Diegans water bills, not the city’s general coffers, the city’s Public Utilities Department has begun a campaign to alert City Council that growing Water Authority prices threaten to eat up much of the city’s water budget. The result means delays on city water projects and maintenance on 3,000 miles of pipeline, and potential staff cuts which has the labor union representing city public utilities workers shook.  

“We’re looking at eliminating 275 filled positions right now including all unfilled positions. That’s a lot of Local 127 positions being eliminated,” said Tim Douglass, president of AFSCME Local 127. 

The City Council seemed fed up. 

“The County Water Authority has been a bad actor. It’s time they get called out,” said District 2 Councilmember Jen Campbell at Tuesday’s City Council meeting.  

At issue Tuesday was whether the Council should allow the city’s Public Utilities Department to automatically add whatever water price increase the Water Authority approves each year to ratepayer’s bills. Right now, the City Council has to approve each rate increase at a series of public hearings, which slows down the department’s budgeting process. That’s why the department was also asking Council on Tuesday to increase water rates by 5.5 percent beginning in May, because the city’s already paying higher Water Authority prices since Jan. 1 with no ability to recoup the cost from customers.  

Come September, the department will again come before Council to ask for another 13.7 percent rate increase, 11 percent of which is the cost of buying water from the Water Authority. 

Last year, the Water Authority proposed raising rates on its 22 customer water districts by almost 25 percent for 2025, more than double what the Water Authority predicted it would need to charge few years ago. The news shocked the city of San Diego, the most powerful water district on the Water Authority’s board, which subsequently beat that price hike down to 14 percent and challenged the agency to cut its operating budget by $2 million. (The Water Authority, in turn, argued cutting the rate increase simply staves off necessary price increases to pay off debt and make repairs to its large aqueducts until a later date. It still hasn’t identified the full $2 million in cuts.) 

Another complicating factor for the city is that the Water Authority sets new water rates every year and the city is trying to budget out its own charges over the next four years. Each year the Water Authority’s actual price increases come in way over what San Diego expects, as it did this year, those costs eat into how much the city planned to spend on its own work. For example, the city has a multi-billion-dollar water recycling project it’s currently working on and those bills will start coming due once it’s online in 2026. 

The Water Authority’s General Manager, Dan Denham, said in a statement that while it’s too early to forecast what will happen in 2025, many of the same pressures on rates in 2024 remain.  

“We will continue to look at every opportunity to reduce costs while maintaining our critical regional infrastructure that the entire county relies upon,” Denham said.  

At Council, the utilities department leaders asked the elected leaders for the power to bake those Water Authority rate hikes – whatever they may be in future years – into water bills without having to go through numerous votes at City Council. But most of the Council agreed that doing so would relinquish the watchdog powers of elected officials to publicly scrutinize the Water Authority’s prices from the dais. In other words, the City Council is gearing up to put a lot more pressure on the Water Authority.  

“I am absolutely not OK with giving them the authority to increase rates until they get serious about keeping rates down,” said Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera. “I’m not seeing demonstrated seriousness from the (Water Authority) in protecting the hard-earned dollars of San Diegans.” 

District 5 Councilmember Marni von Wilpert motioned to simply not pay the city’s bills to the Water Authority this year, which got no support. She pointed to the Water Authority’s contracts with Imperial Valley farmers and a privately-run desalination plant that requires the wholesaler to buy large amounts of water even if there’s no demand for it. San Diego’s representatives on the Water Authority’s board have been pushing for the agency to sell off those contracts to save money.  

“They’re paying for water we’re never going to drink. I refuse to pay for (the Water Authority’s) ghost water,” von Wilpert said.  

District 6 Councilmember Kent Lee said City Council’s authority to vote on Water Authority rate increases could be a point of leverage San Diego shouldn’t give up.  

The Council decided not to vote on the Public Utilities Department’s request. The issue could come up again in March.  

The post San Diego Council Bashes County Water Authority Over Costs appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Two-parter this week. We’re going to make a pit stop on the topic of San Diego’s non-compostable, compostable product market. And then finish off with what new San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava told me about his upcoming tenure as one of the region’s most powerful agenda-setters.  

The plastic bag company I wrote about a few months ago wanted me to let you all know that they re-upped their certification with a European company, TÜV AUSTRIA, to produce compostable plastic bags. I reported back in September that California-based plastics company, Crown Poly, didn’t have valid certificates from the company that was supposed to verify its compostable bags claims. Yet the bags– which can be found at Trader Joe’s, Lazy Acres and other granola grocery stores – still marketed that they were compostable in both backyard and commercial facilities.  

CrownPoly sent me their certification report showing its Pull N Pak bag, designed for compost bins, shopping and produce bags now have that certification again. But not before TÜV AUSTRIA had to reevaluate whether they still counted as compostable. The thickness of the bag had increased and the raw materials changed which deserved another assessment.  

The raw materials for their compostable bags come from an Italian company called Mater-Bi which makes bioplastics from starches, cellulose and vegetable oils. TÜV AUSTRIA already OK’s Mater-Bi’s materials — though what they assess is whether these materials will “disintegrate.”  

Jennifer Brandon, a plastics expert I spoke with back in August, said it’s important to pay attention to the terms these companies use. Compostable doesn’t necessarily mean biodegradable, when a product naturally breaks down into carbon and other elements without any help (like tossing an apple core in the dirt).  

Biodegradation is that chemical process. Disintegration is a physical process. Both have to occur for something to decompose completely. Danny Bozarth, a CrownPoly spokesman, told me in an email the bags should degrade both at-home and in a commercial composter in less than 180 days – that’s about six months or twice the time it takes an apple core to decompose. 

Plastics made of oil, gas or fossil fuels will basically never biodegrade. They may break down into smaller pieces, aka microplastics, but these plastics are so processed and their carbon bonds so old, they almost never break down, Brandon said.   

Then there’s plant-based plastics. Crown Poly’s bags are advertised as made from 100 percent vegetable starches, which seems to be true according to its certification report.  

I can’t tell you how or when. The world of composting certification is sort of a mystery. Studies conducted on products to prove that plastic-substitute materials break down into pure or small enough parts to be re-accepted by nature are often hidden or proprietary, meaning the companies own the information and their certifiers won’t share it.  

Certification or not, it doesn’t matter: Now that’s over, may I remind you of the unfortunate fact that you should NOT throw CrownPoly’s bags, or any cup, straw or wrapper marked “compostable” or “biodegradable” into your green bin. The city of San Diego, the County of San Diego and private haulers including Republic Services, Waste Management, EDCO (that’s as far as I researched) don’t accept those products – as hard as the companies that make them try.  

Not all products break down the same way, the city of San Diego’s spokesperson for the Environmental Services Department told me back in August. And the products that don’t break down well contaminate and diminish the quality of the final compost, they said.  

LaCava, Now Prez, Won’t Abandon Enviro Posts 

Of San Diego’s nine councilmembers, none have arguably done more behind the scenes on the environment recently than Joe LaCava.  

As board chair, he’s guided through its budding years, San Diego Community Power – a co-op of cities that combine money made from their residents’ energy bills and put it toward securing and building renewable energy projects. Community Power secured over $7.3 billion in long-term energy contracts so far, according to spokesperson Jen Lebron. The company competes to offer lower electric rates than the region’s long standing private competitor, San Diego Gas & Electric. Back in 2021, LaCava spoke out and voted against the city resigning its monopoly-granting contract with SDG&E, owned by gas company Sempra.  

He got behind the campaign to “re-wild” Mission Bay’s northeastern corner where the last remaining patch of native saltmarsh still stands, abutted on all sides by development. He stood side by side with San Diego Bird Alliance (formerly San Diego Audubon Society) and representatives from the Kumeyaay tribe at rallies, calling for a plan to rebuild more wetlands than human recreational space. (Ultimately, the City Council opted for a plan with less wetlands than LaCava wanted.) 

He chaired the council’s Environment Committee, not typically a priority appointment for city councilmembers looking to build power as say, the budget or rules-making committees. And, while I’m not personally a fan of this hallmark, the coastal councilmember got wood-burning bonfires banned from city beaches – a win for seaside residents whose lawns are exposed to bonfire smoke, but a loss for everyone else who now has to purchase propane (a fossil fuel) to enjoy a Pacific sunset.  

In an interview just before Christmas, LaCava told me that while he’d eventually abandon his post as chair, he’d stay on the San Diego Community Power board as San Diego’s alternate. But he’ll continue to lead the board through this next round of rate setting which is typically over by February. But as council president he could play another major role: Preparing the city to challenge SDG&E on its franchise contract which would be up for another 10-year renewal around 2031. LaCava had called for a five-year contract term back when it was being negotiated.  

“Technically our franchise agreements expire in 10 years. Everybody talks about it like it’s an automatic renewal. It doesn’t have to be,” LaCava told me. “It’s incumbent on councilmembers to keep a sharp eye on that.”  

Councilmember Sean Elo-Rivera will take over as Environment Committee chair. I asked how he will ensure the city’s Climate Action Plan goals won’t fall by the wayside as the city struggles with a $258 million budget deficit. The engineer by training pointed to another bit of nerdom, an administrative regulation – as it’s known – or an internal rule within city government that directs each department to view everything it does through the lens of its Climate Action plan. Passed on Dec. 16, each city department has to report how it’s working on pieces of the Climate Action Plan as an accompaniment to its budget requests. 

This year he’ll serve as vice chair of the San Diego Association of Governments, the region’s transportation planning agency, where he will have a chance to influence the biggest source of San Diego’s emissions: Driving gas-powered cars.  

In Other News  

• In other LaCava news, the First District rep said he wants to end nightly summertime SeaWorld fireworks, linked to bird deaths in Mission Bay. (Voice of San Diego) 
• An investigating attorney at a law firm preparing to sue SeaWorld San Diego at the end of the month revealed what lies beneath the fireworks launchpad following a scuba dive. (Voice of San Diego) 
• San Diego escaped any dramatic wildfire activity during the latest, deadly bout of wildfires. But Santa Ana winds are picking up again in San Diego (and Los Angeles which suffered devastating loss of life and property). (Fox 5) But thousands went without power last week as a precautionary measure by SDG&E to de-energize power lines so they wouldn’t spark fires. (Union-Tribune) 
• What the heck are Santa Ana winds? In short, they are highly pressurized air masses from the deserts that blow west toward the coast, areas with air masses experiencing low pressure (high pressure likes to flow toward low pressure, that’s the general rule). That air exchange can create hurricane-force winds as they did in Los Angeles. But USA Today has a nice explainer with some graphics. (USA Today)  
• Our Sacramento reporter Deborah Brennan describes how human-caused climate change is driving Californian’s electric bills according to state budget analysts. (Voice of San Diego) 
• Imperial Valley advocacy groups lost in their attempt to bring a lawsuit against lithium extraction companies for allegedly downplaying how much water the project would need and inadequately addressing air quality impacts. A Superior court judge said those companies aren’t required to speculate about the future environmental consequences of their project. (inewsource) 
• San Diego’s Natural History Museum has a new free resource for schools and parents looking to incorporate outdoor education in their child’s lives called “Nature Buds.” Here’s the link to the workbook.  

The post Environment Report: Compostable Bags Still Not Compostable appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

Mortar and shell casings and plastic caps littered Fiesta Island’s dog beach just west of a barge used by SeaWorld San Diego to launch its fireworks displays. Below the waterline, ignition wires tangled around sprouting bright green seagrass. 

This is just some of the evidence collected by Natalie Clagett from Coast Law Group, a local environmental law firm, that put SeaWorld on notice it would sue the company for pollution caused by its pyrotechnics. The litter, they allege, violates the Clean Water Act and the company’s permit to launch fireworks 150 nights each year.  

The firm began gathering fireworks debris around the time the San Diego Bird Alliance (formerly known as the Audubon Society San Diego) blamed SeaWorld’s Fourth of July fireworks show for scaring threatened coastal birds from their Mission Bay nesting grounds resulting in deaths. Like a kind of marine detective, Clagett staked out SeaWorld’s fireworks show last year on Memorial Day from the Fiesta Island beach and returned the next day to verify whether company staff collected the aftermath – part of SeaWorld’s Fireworks Best Management Practices Plan.  

Clagett said she didn’t see anyone cleaning the day after the show. So she collected a large plastic tote of shell casings, red plastic caps and wires herself. Later, on Oct. 6, after the summer fireworks season ended, she donned scuba gear and scoured a few hundred feet around the floating fireworks launch pad pulling orange and white ignition cords from the bay floor, video footage from her dive shows.  

“You go down there and it’s just wires. Like, does seagrass grow in orange?” Clagett told Voice of San Diego.  

Tracy Sphar, a spokesperson for SeaWorld San Diego, said the company doesn’t comment on pending litigation.  

SeaWorld submits its fireworks management plan to the state Regional Water Quality Control Board which regulates the company’s fireworks permit. The 2022 plan claims none of their fireworks use plastic shell casings and are 100 percent biodegradable. Its post-show clean up method is supposed to be this: A team gathers floating debris from the water’s surface by boat and sweeps and bags debris from the launchpad within 12 hours of the show. Crews should be walking the beach during low tide for five consecutive days following fireworks shows to collect debris. SeaWorld is also supposed to send a dive team once a year to collect debris within a fifty-foot perimeter around the launch pad. 

Clagett said, from her perspective, it doesn’t look like a dive crew hit the area quite some time.  

The company submits a report after each fireworks display to the State Water Board recording how many fireworks it detonated and the amount of debris collected afterwards. During the Fourth of July show last year, for instance, SeaWorld set off about 1,394 pounds of explosives. Staff gathered about 356 pounds of debris from the launch sites and only about 0.5 pounds of floating debris from the water’s surface – that’s just 25 percent of the total weight of the ignited fireworks. (It’s not clear, however, what percent of a firework’s weight is lost just through detonation.) The park’s president, Tyler Carter, signed the report eleven days after the event.  

Two dogs belonging to Joe Mahaffy, a Point Loma resident since 1996, played through the Fiesta Island tidal zone on Thursday morning. Clagett watched and worried whether dogs and kids swimming in the area would step on the stripped wires she knew littered the bay floor below.  

Mahaffy said he walks his dogs past the fireworks barge almost every day and he finds lots of fireworks debris. Not only do the fireworks explosions disturb his dogs, but so does the mess the shows leave behind. 

“There’s a number of people who come along here that as long as they’re carrying poop bags for their dogs, they have another bag and put garbage in it,” Mahaffy said. “It’s almost exclusively people that walk their dogs that (clean up).”  

Mahaffy said he would be happy to see the fireworks go, a sentiment that’s gaining traction. San Diego City Council President Joe LaCava recently said he would seek to end the nightly shows during the summertime and push for drone or laser shows instead. The public committee that manages Mission Bay Park unanimously voted to oppose fireworks displays, both legal and illegal last September.  

The post What Lies Beneath SeaWorld’s Fireworks Launch Pad appeared first on Voice of San Diego.

The most powerful person on San Diego City Council says SeaWorld’s nightly fireworks shows over Mission Bay “should be stopped.”  

SeaWorld San Diego hosts nightly fireworks shows during the summer months as well as during major holidays. The marine theme park faced criticism over its shows in the past, but a spate of bird deaths in Mission Bay following consecutive days of pyrotechnics last Fourth of July reignited calls from bird activists to end the noise.  

“Fireworks, night after night, is something that has to end,” LaCava told Voice of San Diego. “It’s one thing to do Fourth of July or start of the summer season shows, but 150 nights a year is just way beyond.”  

LaCava added that laser or light shows via drone could be a viable substitute.  

LaCava, who represents District 1 and the north shore of Mission Bay, said he’d work with the city’s legal team after the first of the year to see how the city could limit fireworks under its 50-year lease agreement with SeaWorld which sunsets in 2048. 

Two prominent environmental groups put SeaWorld on notice that they intend to file a lawsuit over pollution fireworks shows cause in Mission Bay. Patrick McDonough, an attorney for San Diego Coastkeeper, said he hasn’t heard “a peep” from the company.  

“SeaWorld tested out (drone shows) in the past,” McDonough said.  

SeaWorld replaced some fireworks shows with drone and laser shows between 2017 and 2020, reads Coastkeeper’s complaint letter to SeaWorld. But the nightly fireworks displays in summertime returned.  

Fireworks are the second problem San Diego’s had with SeaWorld in recent months. In December, the company settled a lawsuit brought by the city over an alleged $12.2 million in back rent, late fees and interest.  

SeaWorld San Diego didn’t respond to a request for comment.  

The post New San Diego Council President Wants to End SeaWorld Fireworks appeared first on Voice of San Diego.