Environment Report: Vargas Protecting Her TJ River Parks Project from Superfund Label

Nora Vargas, San Diego County Board of Supervisors Chair

Nora Vargas said when Greg Cox departed from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, he left behind a list of pending work to bolster South Bay’s public parks system. 

Vargas, now the board’s chair and south San Diego’s representative, said she took a look at that list and realized not much had been done to help communities in South Bay’s southwestern communities. ‘Lo, the “Gateway to the Californias” regional park concept was born. And Vargas is trying to protect the land she’s eyeing for the project from becoming designated as a Superfund hazardous waste site. 

Supervisor Terra Lawson-Remer told me she’s submitted a Superfund request for the Tijuana River Valley along with around 500 public testimonies about the pollution to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. It’s not clear right now how much of the vast Tijuana River Valley could potentially be considered under such a designation. The EPA would do some soil, water and potentially air testing first. But the final map could overlap with areas Vargas’ staked out for her parks project.  

Last month, and with the help of her Republican colleagues, Vargas stalled a decision to designate a swath of land where Mexican sewage spills over the border into San Diego as a Superfund site. Traditionally reserved for the nation’s dirtiest and abandoned industrial waste lands, some in South Bay feel a Superfund designation in the Tijuana River estuary would trigger more and faster federal support getting it cleaned up. 

At the time, Vargas said the county needed more time to understand all the legal and property value ramifications pursuing Superfund status could entail. But sources told me they thought Vargas stalled because she didn’t want to jeopardize a project she unveiled during her State of the County address in February. 

“For decades, the beauty of the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park has been reduced to the transboundary pollution crisis. While the County will continue working to solve the cross-border sewage pollution and mitigate its impact on ocean waters, creating a regional active recreation space for its adjacent communities will breathe new life into the area,” Vargas said then.

I asked Vargas to clarify in late October. Does that Superfund designation affect the Gateways project, I asked. 

“I think it does,” she said. 

Lawson-Remer is pursuing the Superfund designation anyway with the backing of Imperial Beach, one of the communities most affected by the cross-border pollution. Varagas’ split from supporting Superfund added fuel to the ongoing feud heating up between Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre and Vargas, according to our South Bay reporter Jim Hinch. The Imperial Beach Democratic Club, chaired by Aguirre, took the symbolic step of rescinding its endorsement of Vargas in her re-election race she handedly won. 

In a statement Monday, Aguirre backpedaled a bit and commended Vargas for her efforts to enhance recreation in “park poor” South County. But she has sent her own letter to President Biden suggesting a Superfund designation for the valley. 

By MacKenzie Elmer | Nov. 18, 2024 | Voice of San Diego

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