The federal commission in charge of monitoring the polluted water flowing into the U.S. from Mexico said the flowing had stopped Friday morning however more sewage and debris continued to push into the country over the weekend.
A local Border Patrol union leader said he is working getting the information directly to the President of the United States.
“It’s obviously this kind of funky sewage smell. It is of decay and sewage, feces,” retired U.S. Border Patrol Agent Christopher Harris said of the smell of the Tijuana River Valley. “There’s a serious problem.”
Millions of gallons of runoff and flow of polluted water from Tijuana into the southern part of San Diego County failed to cease. Pollutants in the water include human waste, chemicals, and diseases.
The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) said the flow of polluted water stems from a ruptured pipe underneath a Tijuana junkyard and alleged that the flow stopped Friday morning.
However, the community watchdog group Citizens Against Sewage told NBC 7 San Diego that Tijuana River gauges show more than 11 million gallons of polluted water flowed over the border since Friday morning.
“They are getting ill and injured. We’ve documented. We have pictures of guys with chemical burns on their feet,” Harris said of border patrol in the area. “The men and women of the Border Patrol deserve better. The people that live down here deserve better.”
An IBWC spokeswoman confirmed for NBC 7 the flow did restart during the weekend and could not explain why the commission did not warn anyone in San Diego County.