Is the Tijuana River poisoning residents in San Diego County?
The Tijuana River has been polluted for decades, but in recent years, South San Diego residents say the smell — and their respiratory illnesses — has gotten worse.
The Tijuana River should not be flowing this time of year. But throughout the dry season, it has — delivering millions of gallons a day of an unnatural mix of water, neon green sewage and industrial waste from Tijuana through the city of Imperial Beach to the Pacific Ocean. Residents are concerned that the river is poisoning them. County and state officials say the rotten egg smell is a nuisance, not an immediate public health crisis.
Jireh Deng (they/them) was a 2023-24 fellow at the Los Angeles Times. Deng, a queer Asian American writer and filmmaker, was born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley. Their freelance reporting and writing have been published in the Guardian, the Washington Post, Teen Vogue, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, the Huffington Post, PopSugar, LAist and more. In prior positions, they were a fact-checker at the labor magazine In These Times, managed NPR’s Diverse Sources Database as an intern and worked as an associate producer on CapRadio’s limited podcast series on Asian American identity, “Mid Pacific.” Deng currently co-directs the Asian American Journalists Assn. LGBTQIA+ affinity group.
