A wave of San Diego beaches have been shut down following a disgusting discovery in the water.
City health officials released an updated advisory and closure list of beaches due to sewage creating frighteningly high levels of bacteria in the open waters.
Water contact closures were issued for Silver Strand Shoreline, Imperial Beach Shorelines, and the Tijuana Slough Shoreline, along the U.S, Mexico border.
Advisories were issued for the La Jolla, Children’s Pool, Coronado, Coronado Lifeguard Tower, the Ocean Beach, Dog Beach, the San Diego River outlet, Mission Bay, North Cove, and Vacation Isle.
In Imperial Beach, the number one dirtiest beach in the country, bright yellow warning signs have been placed on the sand as sewage has been flowing in from Tijuana, Mexico, KGTV reported.
‘The level of stress when you smell the stench, when you get sick and you worry about your children, and the level of stress and the depression is real,’ Dr Marvel Harrison said during a press conference on Monday.
‘It’s difficult to measure, but it’s there.’
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre and San Diego County Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer announced that they plan to work on obtaining state and federal funding to fix the century-old sewage problem in the city.
‘We need our state and federal governments to declare a state of emergency,’ she advised.
‘Our community deserves clean air and clean water, and we will not rest until this is resolved.’
The Surfrider Foundation tested thousands of water samples across the nation and every sample recovered from Imperial Beach turned up bacteria counts that exceeded the state’s health standard for recreational waters.
To establish the funding, the city officials plan to gather all necessary data to try and fix the unsanitary problem that has taken over the beach city.
‘We also are going to be pursuing additional funding and support to discuss the public and economic impacts of the sewage crisis,’ Lawson-Remer said.
California is home to three of the most polluted beaches in the country, according to the activist network.
The Surfrider Foundation also found that 64 percent of the 567 sites tested had at least one sample with unsafe bacteria levels.
A quarter of the samples came from sites in California, with three beaches in The Golden State among the ten most polluted.
The other heavily polluted California locations are Linda Mar Beach in Pacifica, where the survey found more than half the samples had unsafe bacteria levels.
The mouth of the San Luis Obispo Creek, in San Luis Obispo, saw 35 percent of samples yield high bacteria levels.
Imperial Beach has been closed for over two years due to toxic untreated water from the Tijuana River Watershed flowing into the Pacific Ocean before reaching the town.
Aguirre previously told the LA Times: ‘People in my community are getting sick left and right.
‘We cannot afford to continue to punt the responsibility across the border because we have a dire situation here on United States soil, on California soil, that is harming California constituents.’
Residents living near the beach say they are experiencing health issues as a result of the cross-border sewage problem.
In March, resident Shannon Johnson, who has lived a few blocks from the beach since 2010, said that her and her kids don’t step foot on the sand anymore.
Johnson told CBS: ‘Every time we go by the beach they’re asking, “Is it going to be clean? When are they going to fix it?”‘
Despite Imperial Beach seeing over 700 consecutive days of beach closures, residents continue to endure the daily effects of pollution.
Johnson mentioned that her young children have also been exposed to the foul smell, as they attend school near the river valley.
According to a study by San Diego State University, heavy metals, toxic chemicals, and bacteria detected in the water are being released into the air and lingering in the soils.
‘I’m more frustrated than ever since we found out that it goes into the air. So it’s not just the water,’ another resident told CBS.
Another resident who wrote a letter calling for action said the smell is ‘akin to being trapped in a portable toilet,’ so strong that it wakes them up at night.
Typically ocean water tends to be clean except after it rains when runoff and storm water end up at the beach.
San Diego’s Beach and Bay Program have created a handy chart to help residents determine warning levels at their local beaches.
Black and yellow signs stand for sewage advisories, blue and orange signage informs people of warnings, and a bright yellow and red sign means that beaches are closed due to sewage issues.