Farmers Say Supervisor’s Sewage Efforts Cost Them Their Livelihood

For more than two decades, small-scale farmers and community gardeners have grown fresh fruits and vegetables, native plants, flowers and other produce at the Tijuana River Valley Community Garden, a 20-acre complex of publicly owned farmland adjacent to the Tijuana River near the U.S.-Mexico border. 

The complex of quarter-acre farms and 30-foot-by-30-foot garden plots supports more than 200 local families and a handful of small farm businesses. Aspiring gardeners wait years for a spot. Members describe the garden as a lifeline of beauty, community and healthy food. 

All of that came to a halt last week when representatives from the Resource Conservation District of Greater San Diego County, which manages the garden, issued mass eviction notices to all 217 community gardeners and farmers. 

One reason for the sudden eviction, the district’s executive director said, was a series of pollution warning signs erected six weeks ago at several locations throughout the river valley, including at the garden itself, at the behest of San Diego County Supervisor Paloma Aguirre. 

The roughly two-foot-high red signs say in large letters, “Warning! Elevated levels of Hydrogen Sulfide gas have been detected due to Tijuana River pollution.” 

Conservation district Executive Director Ann Baldridge said the signs set off alarm bells among the district’s board of directors, who worried the small agency, which promotes agriculture and other land stewardship initiatives in San Diego County, risked endangering its employees or exposing itself to legal liability by continuing to manage the garden. 

Baldridge said the board voted to end its role as manager of the garden and evict the gardeners at its most recent board meeting on Sept. 10. 

“We really value the community and care deeply about the community and farmers there,” Baldridge said. “The signs going up just felt like a red flag. It was felt that the responsible thing to do if the situation is that grave…was to remove the Resource Conservation District as the manager of the site…We are caught between a rock and a hard place here.” 

Since the district sent emails last week notifying farmers and gardeners that they have 60 days to pack up their things and leave, the garden – and the conservation district – have been in tumult. 

One district board member resigned following the decision to evict the gardeners, Baldridge said. A staff member who recently had been offered a job elsewhere quit early and left. 

Gardeners have held a series of emergency meetings and circulated an online petition that so far has garnered more than 1,400 signatures. Gardeners said they plan to bring their concerns to Aguirre at a town hall the supervisor will hold Tuesday evening at the San Ysidro public library. 

“What we want is to stay on the land and not to leave until the county finds solutions and an organization who wants to manage the land,” said Nanzi Muro, a community gardener who is helping to organize gardeners’ response to the evictions. 

In an interview Monday, Aguirre said it was never her intention to shut down the garden, and she is now working with gardeners and county staff employees to figure out a way to keep the garden open after the conservation district ceases managing the land. 

“I would like for them to be able to stay,” Aguirre said following a meeting she held with roughly a dozen gardeners Monday afternoon. “What I would like to see is a path forward, how can we protect public health and ensure people can stay and keep cultivating their garden.” 

Aguirre denied the warning signs she urged county staff to erect around the Tijuana River Valley had anything to do with the garden’s closure. 

“This is not about pointing fingers,” she said. “It’s about doing what’s best for the community and protecting public health. I don’t want to bury my head in the sand” about health risks posed by sewage and industrial waste in the river. 

The pollution warning signs went up throughout the Tijuana River Valley in late August as part of Aguirre’s ongoing effort to raise awareness about the health impacts of sewage pollution. 

Aguirre promoted the signs at an Aug. 20 press conference with San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, at which she spotlighted recent scientific studies documenting elevated levels of hydrogen sulfide gas near the river. 

County workers tacked up one of the signs at the entrance to the Tijuana River Valley Community Garden, where a week earlier Aguirre had held another press conference urging county air quality regulators to move faster distributing air purifiers to nearby residents. 

Baldridge said media attention surrounding those press conferences caused conservation district board members to worry the district’s garden program was exposing gardeners and district employees to toxic levels of pollution. 

The district began managing the garden in 2002 at the request of county staff employees, who wanted to start a community gardening program in the area and recruited the district to manage it. 

The district leases the land from the county and makes it available for a small fee to gardeners and farmers. Small garden plots rent for $324 per year. Quarter-acre farm plots rent for $1,600 annually. 

Baldridge said after board members voted to end their involvement with the garden, district officials and a consultant met with county staff employees, and with Aguirre herself, to ask about finding a way to keep the garden open without the conservation district as a manager. 

Baldridge said Aguirre “empathized with [the gardeners] but [said] she’s also very concerned about the health situation and pollution hazards.” County staff said they could do nothing until the conservation district terminated its lease and returned the land to county control, Baldridge said. 

For farmers, the back and forth between county agencies simply underscores their sense of helplessness. 

“So many people are upset,” said Bryan Rivera, a community gardener whose family-owned Abriendo Camino farm grows herbs and other produce for use in teas and medicinal extracts. “Lots of [people who use the garden] are elders and veterans and people with disabilities. They found out last-minute” about the evictions. 

Rivera said farmers are mystified why, after 23 years, the conservation district suddenly is kicking them out. Especially since just a few weeks earlier, the district installed gazebos and made other improvements to the garden. 

Rivera said everything changed after “Supervisor Paloma started making it really loud [and] more media coverage started coming. They even had a press conference outside the garden…I feel all of these things made the management rethink their decision.” 

Rivera said he hopes someone in charge can help put things right. 

“It’s pretty hard to find access to land,” he said. “Right now we are not successful finding a location” where Abriendo Camino could continue to farm. 

Aguirre said she is determined to help farmers like Rivera stay in business.  

“There are occasions when the air is so foul, people are running and exercising with their eyes watery,” she said. “It would be reckless for us to not have those signs up…We want to make sure we’re all making an informed decision that minimizes potential health risks and gardeners can continue doing what they love.” 

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