Chula Vista's City Council voted to hire a Washington, D.C. lobbying firm for federal advocacy this week, but not before stripping out a companion partnership that would have paired the city with Imperial Beach on the Tijuana River Valley sewage crisis. Councilmember Jose Preciado moved to amend the proposal by removing the Imperial Beach piece, and the amended item carried unanimously.
The council approved Thorn Run Partners LLC for Chula Vista-specific federal lobbying, according to reporting from The San Diego Union-Tribune. The deal carries an initial 10-month term worth $89,167, with a total not-to-exceed amount of $539,140 across four possible one-year extensions. Chula Vista received five bids for the work, with Thorn Run's $104,000 annual bid landing between rival bidder Cris Com's $69,000 offer and Acorn's $156,000 proposal. A selection committee recommended Thorn Run, and Councilmember Greg Burns cited the firm's very large local government practice and regional experience in backing the pick.
Thorn Run Partners carries serious national weight. Bloomberg Government ranked the firm ninth among top U.S. federal lobbying firms by revenue in May, reporting $32.4 million in earnings for 2025. Per the Union-Tribune's reporting, the firm has secured more than $5 billion in federal funding for its clients and has experience with railroad crossing elimination projects tied to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — relevant to Chula Vista's push for a grade separation project at the Palomar trolley station, which Councilmember Cesar Fernandez advocated for during the meeting.
Why the Imperial Beach Piece Got Pulled
The removed memorandum of understanding would have formalized a joint scope of work with Imperial Beach focused specifically on the cross-border pollution crisis along the Tijuana River Valley. Under that arrangement, Imperial Beach would have contributed up to $10,000 through June 2027, an estimated $65,100 over five years, including $1,000 per month during the first year, according to the Union-Tribune's account of the deal terms.
Fernandez made the motion to strip the Imperial Beach component, with Councilmember Michael Inzunza seconding it. Inzunza said he wanted one collaborative advocacy effort from all South Bay cities rather than a two-city arrangement, and other council members echoed the concern that a Chula Vista-Imperial Beach pairing risked duplicating advocacy efforts already underway elsewhere. Preciado directed staff to map current advocacy efforts and coordinate with existing advocates, and city staff must now also coordinate specifically with Coronado and San Diego County. Not every council member was on board with the change — John McCann said he was disappointed the Imperial Beach partnership was not approved.
Imperial Beach currently has no federal lobbyist of its own. Its council had already adopted Resolution 2026-083 on August 19, approving the partnership on its end, and Imperial Beach Mayor Mitch McKay had personally asked Chula Vista's council to approve the deal. Assistant City Manager Tiffany Allen attributed the delay to coordination with outside agencies and told the council she could not commit to a specific timeline for bringing the Imperial Beach item back, though the council plans to revisit it at a later date. Adrianna Relph said the removed scope would have formalized Chula Vista's existing goal of extending federal lobbying on the sewage crisis, and Chula Vista has previously worked with Imperial Beach, Coronado, National City and San Diego on the issue.
A Crisis That Keeps Escalating
Inzunza compared the sewage crisis to “the Flint, Michigan of the West Coast” during the discussion, underscoring how South Bay officials view the pollution as an entrenched public health emergency rather than a passing nuisance. The comparison lands against a grim backdrop: on August 25, the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health and Quality closed three more sections of Imperial Beach's coastline — Seacoast Drive, Carnation Avenue, and Cortez Avenue — due to toxic sewage surges from the Tijuana River, as reported by SFGATE. Imperial Beach City Manager Tyler Foltz has noted the city has endured continuous beach closures for over four years with only a handful of open days.
The health toll is measurable, too. Early results from San Diego State University's “Healthy Water, Healthy Air” survey, released in July, found more than 500 South Bay residents reported nausea, headaches, brain fog, and respiratory distress linked even to brief spikes of hydrogen sulfide gas from the sewage, according to KPBS. The survey, led by SDSU associate professor Paula Stigler Granados, gathered data from September 2024 through June 2026 across Chula Vista, Imperial Beach, Nestor, and San Ysidro. That data helps explain why South Bay officials frame the pollution as an active health emergency rather than simply an odor complaint, an issue Hoodline has previously covered in Nestor.
Federal, State and Grassroots Money All Moving at Once
Chula Vista's lobbying decision arrives amid a flurry of parallel efforts to fund a fix. President Biden signed supplemental disaster relief legislation in December 2024 appropriating $250 million to repair and expand the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Ysidro, bringing total 2024 federal allocations for the facility to $610 million — the amount the International Boundary and Water Commission had requested to expand plant capacity to 50 million gallons daily, according to the office of U.S. Senator Alex Padilla.
That capacity gap remains urgent. Repeated collapses of Tijuana's aging Parallel Gravity Line pipeline in May and June forced the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission to handle sustained wastewater flows exceeding 45 million gallons per day, well beyond the South Bay treatment plant's 35 MGD design capacity, per the commission's own updates. USIBWC Commissioner Chad McIntosh has pushed Mexican counterparts for 24/7 repair schedules to keep untreated waste out of the river.
California lawmakers introduced state Senate Bills 58 and 1046 in May to set strict air quality standards for hydrogen sulfide sewer gas and workplace safety guidelines for personnel operating near the Tijuana River Valley, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, with state legislators and local officials repeatedly pressing Governor Gavin Newsom to declare a formal state emergency. Meanwhile, the U.S. House passed legislation from Rep. Scott Peters in June 2025 allowing the International Boundary and Water Commission to accept up to $5 million in direct contributions from non-federal and local government entities for border sewage treatment projects, a bill co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of San Diego-area representatives.
On the grassroots side, a South Bay citizen coalition delivered more than 150,000 petition signatures in May to qualify a half-cent countywide sales tax measure for the November ballot, which Hoodline reported could raise up to $367 million annually with over 20% earmarked for Tijuana River sewage infrastructure. The San Diego County Board of Supervisors, for its part, first declared a local emergency over the border sewage pollution back in June 2023 and voted unanimously to extend it in September 2024, a declaration that has opened avenues for CDC health investigations and local air purifier distribution programs.
For now, Chula Vista's own advocacy push moves forward without Imperial Beach formally attached, even as council members insist the pause is about building a wider coalition — not stepping back from the cross-border fight. Staff have been directed to bring the Imperial Beach partnership back for consideration once the broader regional mapping with Coronado, San Diego County, and other South Bay cities is complete.
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