Four hundred air purifiers are being delivered to several South Bay neighborhoods this month as part of a new county program meant to help some residents deal with odors and air pollution created by the cross-border sewage crisis.
But not everyone is happy with how the county is handing those devices out.
That’s because officials are using a lottery system, randomly selecting residents in the city of Imperial Beach and the south San Diego neighborhoods of Nestor and San Ysidro.
A number of Imperial Beach residents took to Instagram earlier this month to condemn that decision to raffle off the devices. Some said it was a tone-deaf and insensitive choice as neighborhoods around the Tijuana River Valley continue to grapple with the environmental hazards and economic strain of the sewage flows.
Others criticized the choice to hand out the devices at random instead of focusing on neighborhoods that are most exposed to sewage flows or on residents with health conditions.
“It’s a joke to be raffled off,” said Imperial Beach resident Jarrod Caswell, who runs a local shuttle service and serves on the city’s chamber of commerce. “The purifiers should have been handed out from ground zero outwards, and then the people with disabilities.”
San Diego County officials argued that a random drawing was the fairest approach, since they had just 400 purifiers to give out across Imperial Beach, Nestor and San Ysidro – an area home to around 140,000 people.
In an email, county spokesperson Michael Workman said they did prioritize reaching out to poor seniors and families with children in the area to let them know about the lottery.
The cross-border sewage crisis stems from Tijuana’s aging wastewater system, which hasn’t kept pace with the city’s growing population. That’s allowed billions of gallons of untreated waste to spill into the Tijuana River Valley and the Pacific Ocean since last October, according to the environmental group San Diego Coastkeeper.
The county’s air purifier lottery was meant to give at least some South Bay households short-term relief from odors and air pollution.
The devices work by scrubbing large particles like pollutants out of the air. Last year, county supervisors set aside $100,000 for the program, enough to purchase about 400 purifiers in total. Workman said each device will come with two replacement filters and could last as long as a year and a half.
San Diego County Chairwoman Nora Vargas, who represents the South Bay and led the push for the air purifier program, said she was proud to see it moving forward.
“I brought forward this initiative to provide immediate relief to our families who have long endured the severe impacts of pollution,” Vargas said in a statement. “While we continue to work with federal, state, and local partners on comprehensive, long-term solutions, these air purifiers represent our ongoing effort to improve daily lives.”
Vargas’ office said county staff in other departments were responsible for choosing to raffle off the purifiers and declined to answer specific questions about the decision.
Others voicing their frustrations with the rollout of the program included Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.
“It’s outrageous that in 2024, our kids have to be bussed to clean beaches & now south county residents are only eligible for air filters through a raffle,” she wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Especially when $750k is being spent on a brick and mortar ‘resiliency hub & multi-sports complex right next to the TJ River.’”
Caswell, the local shuttle service owner, said the county should let local governments like Imperial Beach make their own plans for how to distribute purifiers if the program continues.
The air purifier program is one sign of growing recognition that the cross-border sewage flows are also polluting the air, a risk that South Bay residents have raised concerns about for years.
The crisis has led to plenty of research about how those sewage flows are affecting local water quality. But until recently, regional air quality agencies and researchers have largely neglected to examine what that pollution means for the air.
Some recent studies have taken a look at the skies off the coast, uncovering airborne microbes and chemicals over the ocean. Last year, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District also installed a new air monitoring sensor in San Ysidro. It immediately picked up high levels of hydrogen sulfide, a sewer gas that can be dangerous in higher concentrations.
A report earlier this year also pointed out that few air quality studies have been conducted in the areas around the Tijuana River Valley where people actually live and work.
The researchers from San Diego State University said there were reasons to believe that certain sewer chemicals could be moving from the water into the air in those areas and causing serious health issues.
“This is an area of urgent need for increased monitoring and surveillance,” they wrote.
