Welcome back here time.
Now is 613 and now this morning,
sewage in the South Bay is affecting people in many ways from their
wallets to their health for those whose job takes them into the ocean.
It is taking a severe toll in this earth eight report.
We show you what it's like to be
a lifeguard during Imperial beach's contamination crisis.
It is a sad sight across the beaches in Imperial Beach.
Barely anyone enjoying the water and the few who are are taking a big risk.
That's because these waters are full of bacteria.
The type of bacteria you would find in human and animal waste,
anything that gets flushed or set down the drains,
channels and streets of Mexico flows here.
Take a look at this video from Imperial Beach lifeguards.
These foam balls you see are filled with fecal matter.
This is probably the worst it's been and I grew up here. So
you know, urbanization in Mexico, the more urbanization,
the more runoff infrastructure gets taxed.
That video was taken March of this year and Captain Jason
Lindquist wishes he could say it was a rare occurrence.
It's pretty bad. You get
lifeguards with headaches, you can smell it, the whole city can smell it.
Most lifeguards start out getting headaches,
you know, on days like that. But if they go in, yeah, we've had,
we have a couple of people that have had rashes and different things.
There's obviously no gate blocking off the beach,
but there are signs that say the water is contaminated with sewage.
Not everybody sees that.
So warning families letting them know about the bacteria
becomes a big part of their job daily.
Not all swimmers are aware or care about the extent of the pollution
and it's even in the air. Recent studies show what people are breathing along. Iy's
coast can hurt them
56,000 to be clean. It's 1400
where you'd normally see the surf report.
Captain Lindquist shows me,
they also have a sign of the lifeguard station with updated bacteria counts.
It was clean here, dirty, dirty, but these are really close,
more dirty days than not.
The south side of IB has been dangerously contaminated for nearly 700 days.
Almost two years straight.
You're constantly going in and out of this and nobody knows what
this is. I tend to take care of myself pretty well. I think I'm fine,
but we don't know about long term effects.
That's one thing that's becoming an issue with the staff
and the morale is
keeping lifeguards is a huge problem in IB.
Now this summer they only had 60% of their shifts filled.
This has taken its toll on the staff for sure.
The mental health, if they've been sick, they don't want to get sick.
They'll still do rescues, but they're subjecting their eyes,
nose mouth and any open wounds to contamination.
We still go in, we still make rescues, whether it's tourists surfers locals or even
smuggling. Once they go in, when they get out, they got to do an exposure report.
And then if they get sick, it becomes a worker's comp issue.
They can't even train in the ocean. They're tasked to guard
normal day clean water. Lifeguards are doing training
in the water where they work.
Currently, we, we send our lifeguards to another city to train and work out.
We pay for swim time at a pool
and the future here not so promising because they
had to cancel the Junior Lifeguard program this year.
Without that training program,
it gets even tougher to recruit skilled lifeguards.
It's forcing these brave men and women to take on
challenges along the US Mexico border that no other lifeguards face
and then to add to some of the staffing issues they've had.
Captain Lindquist says IB lifeguards make about $18 an hour and
many people say that's less than most fast food workers.
And according to a te dot com, lifeguards with the city of San Diego
make about $21 an hour.
So it's hard to lure in people when they're faced with so many different challenges,
especially the health,
the long term impacts the unknown of what they're swimming in.
But the fact that they have to go somewhere else to train
says a lot about the water and the issues that they're having,
they're not gonna send people in there if they
don't have to be in there for an emergency.
See that fecal foam
and
it's
gotta get done. It's just tough because you watch it and it's a travesty to see.
But then you also think about what's been proposed
for solutions and it's like these are some 5,
10 year plans down the line.
Like
are we gonna get a resolution in our lifetime? We
would hope so and it is getting a lot
worse and I think that's the part with the population
in Tijuana growing so much.
People are literally living on this infrastructure that
has not been fixed since the fifties.
So you think about that
and
I mean, it's just become the past two years, especially a bigger issue.
We've talked about funding has been earmarked for it but
not actually getting done yet.
And then you look at the price that uh those lifeguards are getting paid, you know,
per hour, 18 versus 21 can add up.
So it's a big issue. Thank you for highlighting that.