Otay Mesa’s Alyssa Mercer can only play outside with her daughters during the day.
“Once it’s like, 6 o’clock, its like, ‘OK, this smells too much, we need to come back inside,’ ” Mercer told NBC 7 on Monday. “At night, it would be really hot, and I can’t put the air conditioning on … all you smell is, like, the sewage.”
This week, Mercer’s 6-year-old is on spring break, and sewage contamination is the reason she can’t go swimming at the beach or stay outside all day like so many other kids.
“She’s a COVID baby,” Mercen said. “She was born in 2020, and she didn’t get to experience a lot of things growing up because of the smell, because of contamination. It’s like: What else are you going to take from her?”
The heat wave that just rolled through the region made the toxic gas worse.
“We are hearing from community members in Nestor, San Ysidro, Imperial Beach and all the way up to Coronado that people are experiencing symptoms,” said Courtney Baltiyskyy, the vice president of public policy and advocacy with the YMCA of San Diego County; she also helps to lead the Tijuana River Coalition.
Those symptoms are fatigue, nausea, skin and respiratory irritation.
Baltiyskyy said the county has been responsive by issuing air quality alerts as early as 5 a.m. so that families and schools can know what’s coming and to plan to stay inside as much as possible.
Having to strategize their time in the sun on spring break isn’t ideal, but for the Mercers, it’s either work with it or move.
“The only reason why I’m really here is because of school and because of my family,” Mercer said. “But if those two weren’t here, I would easily leave.”
The Tijuana River Coalition is hopeful that the newly proposed Senate Bill 50 will set new parameters for community exposure to hydrogen sulfide.