A cross-border sewage crisis affecting Southern California could play a role in a prominent congressional race, where a Republican challenger has become a national figure on the issue.
Jim Desmond, a San Diego County supervisor, has been sounding the alarm recently on Fox News and other conservative outlets about the untreated sewage that’s been flowing from the Tijuana River in Mexico to the Pacific Ocean, contaminating the water and sickening residents.
At the same time, he’s seeking to unseat Rep. Mike Levin, accusing the Democratic incumbent of not doing enough to protect residents. “We need to put more leverage on Mexico,” Desmond said in a recent interview.
Levin counters that Desmond is a Johnny-come-lately on the matter, though he has praised the Trump administration for taking action.
The sewage situation has only grown worse as the population in and around Tijuana, Mexico, has ballooned and the area’s treatment plants have struggled to keep up. Often, the plants simply dump sewage when they can’t take more.
Shortly after Desmond started calling on the federal government to take action, the Trump administration took notice.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin began pushing the Mexican government for results in March following a major sewage spill. He visited the area in April, meeting with local officials and with Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s secretary of environment and natural resources.
Desmond says Levin’s focus — including $635 million that Levin has gotten approved for projects like improving a major sewage plant on the Mexican side through the bipartisan infrastructure law, among other actions — lets Mexican officials off the hook.
“My opponent is proud of the strategy of throwing more money into the processing of the sewage,” Desmond told POLITICO’s E&E News.
“If your neighbor is throwing their garbage in your front yard, the answer isn’t just to go buy more garbage cans,” he continued. “You do everything possible to stop the sewage flow.”
Levin said he’s the one who’s actually taken action on the issue. He pointed mainly to the money for the Mexican plant, known as San Antonio de los Buenos, but also to fund improvements for the U.S. side’s South Bay treatment plant, which takes some of Tijuana’s sewage to treat, along with pressure to leaders in both countries.
“We both got elected to our respective positions in 2018,” Levin said of Desmond.
“He hasn’t done anything on this issue until about 18 months ago. And what he’s done since then is talk in the media and point fingers, and frankly, offer a ridiculous, counterproductive idea,” Levin continued, referring to Desmond’s advocacy for a dam along the north side of the Tijuana River. That idea has been criticized by air and water experts.
“It would be a disaster for disease, for contamination, lead to all kinds of problems, respiratory problems, other problems,” he said.
‘It’s all hands on deck’
Desmond, an immigration hawk who has pushed for stricter enforcement along the U.S.-Mexico border, supports President Donald Trump and boasts that, if he were in Congress, he’d be a better representative on the Tijuana River issue.
“I think I can get more of the attention of the Trump administration in working on this, getting things done, than my opponent has. He had that for several years with the Biden administration and didn’t do much about it,” Desmond said.
But Levin has nothing but kind words for the administration’s involvement. He met with and appeared with Zeldin during the administrator’s visit to San Diego and has found him to be a good partner, he said.
“I was encouraged by his visit. I felt that he was genuine and sincere in expressing a desire to work collaboratively on it. It’s all hands on deck. Solving it requires real cooperation, bipartisan cooperation, across all levels of government,” Levin said.
He pushed Zeldin to ensure that the money that’s been appropriated is fully spent, even given the administration’s budget and spending cuts, he said.
Following the visit, Zeldin said he successfully pushed Mexican officials to speed up improvements to their plant. EPA proposed a number of other changes to accelerate various promises Mexico has made, and the agency is still negotiating on those.
“It’s important for Mexico to clean up the raw sewage coming from Mexico. And Congress has already appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars,” he said at a House Appropriations Committee hearing.
Zeldin hasn’t politicized the Tijuana issue, despite his frequent criticisms of the Biden administration in many areas and accusations that they did not have their priorities right.
Levin flipped his congressional seat from Republican control in the 2018 election and has won races since then by at least 4 percentage points. The district includes northern San Diego County and part of Orange County.
He’s somewhat vulnerable in the 2026 race but not exceptionally so. The Cook Political Report ranks his race as “likely Democrat,” the least-risky category for Democrats.
Moreover, Desmond might have a tough time making the Tijuana River crisis a salient issue in the race, said Stephen Mumme, a Colorado State University politics professor who studies environmental policy issues along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Congressional districts closer to the border, like those represented by Reps. Juan Vargas (D) and Scott Peters (D), are experiencing the sewage crisis more urgently, though areas farther north have had beaches shut down, among other effects.
“In that north county area, people care about the beaches, that’s a no-brainer. But the impacts aren’t as great up there,” Mumme said.
“I would be surprised if people wanted to change ponies at this point based on what is probably, at best, a fourth- or fifth-tier issue in that district.”
