Otay Mesa’s Alyssa Mercer can only play outside with her daughters during the day.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce it’s like, 6 o\u2019clock, its like, \u2018OK, 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 \u2026 all you smell is, like, the sewage.\u201d<\/p>\n
This week, Mercer’s 6-year-old is on spring break, and sewage contamination is the reason she can\u2019t go swimming at the beach or stay outside all day like so many other kids.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe’s a COVID baby,\u201d Mercen said. \u201cShe 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\u2019s like: What else are you going to take from her?\u201d<\/p>\n
The heat wave that just rolled through the region made the toxic gas worse.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe 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.<\/p>\n
Those symptoms are fatigue, nausea, skin and respiratory irritation.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s coming and to plan to stay inside as much as possible.<\/p>\n
Having to strategize their time in the sun on spring break isn\u2019t ideal, but for the Mercers, it\u2019s either work with it or move. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only reason why I’m really here is because of school and because of my family,\u201d Mercer said. \u201cBut if those two weren’t here, I would easily leave.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Tijuana River Coalition is hopeful that the newly proposed Senate Bill 50 will set new parameters for community exposure to hydrogen sulfide.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Otay Mesa’s Alyssa Mercer can only play outside with her daughters during the day. \u201cOnce it’s like, 6…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":244635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-244634","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-diego","8":"tag-san-diego","9":"tag-san-diego-headlines","10":"tag-san-diego-news","11":"tag-south-bay"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=244634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/244634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/244635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=244634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=244634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=244634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}