Proud of yourself, Gavin? California takes the crown for the nation's filthiest beaches

Does California's Gov. Gavin Newsom ever stop talking about his state's "climate leadership"?

And we’re a state that at our best — not always — but at our best, we believe the world, in many respects, looks to us to see that it’s possible to live together and advance together across many imaginable differences.

 

And that – that absolutely is the case when it comes to the issue of addressing the crisis of our time in climate change.

 

...

We look forward to maintaining our position of leadership. And we look forward to all of us bringing into our positions of formal authority, the moral authority that is needed and demands of this time.

Had enough?

That's what Newsom pontificated to Pope Francis last month on a junket to the Vatican and then placed on his gubernatorial website.

That's ironic.

Today's San Diego Union-Tribune has a hit-it-out-of-the-ballpark editorial on Newsom's (and Joe Biden's) much-touted "climate leadership."

It begins:

By any objective standard, the southern coast of San Diego County is enduring a long-running environmental nightmare. Decades of billions of gallons of untreated human waste flowing north from broken sewage infrastructure in Tijuana have sickened a vast number of surfers and swimmers and many Navy SEALs training at Coronado. Especially because of ailments reported by border agents, some doctors worry that the health threat goes far beyond active ocean users to include those who spend extended time in coastal areas and breathe air that often smells like a filthy portable toilet.

Now there is fresh confirmation of how uniquely awful this problem is. The Surfrider Foundation has released a report on 567 sites in which it tested water for unsafe bacteria levels and found Imperial Beach — which has been closed for more than two years — had far and away the dirtiest water in the United States. Every single water sample from the beach was found to be unsafe. The next worst U.S. beach had a little more than half its samples with excessive bacteria. This finding was no surprise, given previous studies showing heavy metals, toxic chemicals and bacteria in sewage from south of the border. In 2017 alone — when sewage spills were common but not nearly as severe as in recent years —  34,000 illnesses were linked to local water pollution, according to a a Scripps Institution of Oceanography study.

But what remains a surprise is how little is being done to immediately address this problem.

Eeew. This is the nation's filthiest beach, right there in Newsom's very own state with all that moral climate leadership he pontificates about to the point of annoying other governors, including Democrats.

Think about the "honor" this brings to California -- after all, when you think of a dirty beach, what comes to mind? Coney Island? Something in New Jersey? One of the eastern Great Lakes shorelines? Something on the oil-producing Gulf coasts?

Nope, Newsom's California gets the "honor." Those other beaches are all clean, particularly as compared to the filthy beaches of California.

And yes, the U-T points out that both Newsom, and Joe Biden are doing nothing about it.

Newsom in his speech to the pope blamed Big Oil and corporate greed for all the pollution he's doing something about. He ought to be looking to the Mexican government, which is polluting the heck out of San Diego, with poor, battered Imperial Beach being so polluted by Tijuana's sewage outflow the beaches there have been closed for two literally stinking years.

That's because while Newsom's railing about Big Oil, which is regulated heavily by state and federal governments, a foreign government is polluting an otherwise pristine Southern California beach that's famous for its surfing to the point of having a statue of a surfer depicted as a classical hero by noted sculptor A. Wasil.

Well, now Imperial Beach needs an artist to depict the sewage that has fouled the beach, making it the nation's filthiest. I imagine there are some who could do this pretty credibly, but that's not the honor Newsom would think it is.

Big Oil didn't create this pollution. Corporations didn't create this pollution, either. The Mexican government did, and now the Californians have to smell it and swim in it, if not just get away from it.

The U-T continues:

Relief is far from imminent. This is entirely because President Joe Biden and California Gov. Gavin Newsom have resisted calls from local elected leaders — only starting with Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre — to declare the beach crisis an emergency and clear the way for expedited federal action.

Entirely? Yep, entirely. Newsom has the capacity to declare a federal emergency for any cause and he hasn't. And he's not even listening to the Democrat mayor of Imperial Beach, as well as the last guy Imperial Beach had, who was also a Democrat. The U-T also asked why this wasn't "a huge issue" in the state's legislature.

As for the federal level, here's what San Diego County's elected representatives are focused on:

 

 

Instagram shots, looking properly prep, and boutique NGO causes from faraway places on issues such as starvation in Sudan. San Diego's filthy beaches? Not a word.

But she only represents the woke University of San Diego community, which is walking distance from the beaches.

This guy represents Imperial Beach itself.

 

 

All lofty language about the climate crisis and not a single tweet I could find about the environmental nightmare of Imperial Beach, the nation's filthiest.

He represents that filthy beach as he speaks his lofty language about oceans, and well, that pretty much tells us this isn't about healing the earth.

If nothing else, it underlines that the city, state and nation could use new leadership. Newsom and all his pals have got quite an 'honor' of running the nation's dirtiest beach.

Image: Tony Webster, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0

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