Summertime is no cure for environmental blues for us

News about the environment rarely is good these days, but a string of grim developments locally, regionally and internationally cast a particular pall over the otherwise sunny arrival of summer.

Beaches from Imperial Beach north to Coronado were closed because of sewage discharges from Tijuana. The Colorado River’s reservoirs are so low that severe water cuts are on the horizon for much of the southwestern United States. And another climate conference, this one in Germany, pretty much went nowhere.

All of this is bad, though all is not lost. There’s some funding targeted at addressing pollution from south of the border. Efforts to create alternative water sources, if balky, are advancing. And smart people are examining all manner of ways to stave off climate change devastation, even as countries around the world seem to dither.

But timing isn’t on anybody’s side. Potential border pollution solutions are still years off, while the worsening climate change effects that are shrinking the Colorado River supply and threatening the globe are coming on fast.

An overarching issue is whether the political will can be found and consensus achieved to address these concerns.

The closing of beaches in Imperial Beach because of Tijuana sewage has been happening for decades. But closures in Coronado are more rare and now both cities face beach shutdowns throughout the summer. That’s the big shock because the overflow of polluted water into the ocean long has been considered a rainy season occurrence.

A failing sewage plant south of Tijuana at Punta Bandera has been blamed as the year-round culprit. But the new issue may not be so much increased ocean pollution as it is improved testing to detect it.

The DNA-based water quality assessment shows higher levels of pollution with greater frequency than before, according to Joshua Emerson Smith of The San Diego Union-Tribune.

This led Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey to ask whether the water quality was the same as before, when there was no health concern while beaches were open. Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina also questioned the threshold being used to shut down beaches.

“No one wants to swim in dirty water,” Bailey told the Union-Tribune. “But is the water truly unsafe, or is it as safe as it was in past summers?”

Frequently closed beaches over the summer could be devastating to the economy and the way of life in both coastal cities.

The yearslong drought has resulted in deep cuts from the Sacramento River Delta water flowing through the State Water Project. San Diego takes little, if any, water from that system and has relied on the seemingly secure Colorado River, the source of more than half the region’s water. Water from desalination, recycling and local sources make up the rest of the region’s supply.

So there didn’t appear to be much of a threat.

Now, Colorado River water may not be the sure thing it once was. The flow has decreased over recent decades. Photos of the low levels at Lake Mead and Lake Powell on the Colorado have become the iconic images of water woes.

Just last week, the U.S. Department of the Interior told the seven states that share the water they will need to map out drastic cuts within the next two months. What that will mean to San

Diego is unclear.

The region gets river water through an agreement with the Imperial Irrigation District, which has senior water rights and would be among the last agencies to face cuts. But the states already were working to reach a new compact on sharing the river water by 2026. The federal government’s sense of urgency for more immediate action injects more uncertainty.

“The Colorado River Basin faces greater risks than any other time in our modern history,” Tanya Trujillo, the Interior Department’s assistant secretary for water and science, said during a speech Thursday, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Officials are now talking about what was once unthinkable: That Lake Mead could become a “dead pool.” That’s when the level of water drops so low it could no longer pass through the Hoover Dam.

The Bonn Climate Change Conference ended last week with little progress after nations had adopted the sweeping Glasgow Climate Pact at a summit in 2021. Even that agreement has come under criticism for not going far enough.

At Bonn, United Nations officials said some technical issues were advanced, but not everyone was satisfied with where things stood.

“There is no political will, and nothing has actually changed since Glasgow,” Nisreen Elsaim, 27, chair of the U.N. secretary-general’s youth advisory group on climate change, told The Washington Post.

Granted, the Bonn gathering was comparatively modest and seen as largely to lay the groundwork for the next big meeting, COP27 in Egypt in November.

Despite pledges, nations are struggling to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that have contributed to global warming.

A major focus of COP27 is expected to be on technologies to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and reflecting sunlight, along with relying on more trees and the ocean more to absorb carbon.

There’s plenty of questions about the ethics and feasibility of the artificial strategies, but at least they’re talking about possibilities that could keep the planet from going over the brink.

Meanwhile, a muchsmaller scale project with potentially big impact was announced by Boeing this week. The aerospace company unveiled a 777 “ecoDemonstrator” to test fuels and efficiencies aimed at decarbonizing air travel.

It would be great to fly on a more environmentally friendly plane someday. If only it would go someplace where these problems don’t exist.