October 2025 Newsletter

Coronado City Update

By Mark Fleming

Coronado Bridge Suicide Deterrent Project

At the September 16th Council Meeting, Caltrans presented an update on the Coronado Bridge Suicide Deterrent project.  According to the Caltrans Project Manager, the design of the suicide barrier is complete, and Caltrans is working to secure the necessary funding to build the project.  It is my belief that the necessary funding will be secured and that the project will move forward.

Caltrans is expecting to issue a progressive design-build contract by mid-2026 and expects to see construction start in late 2026.  The suicide deterrent system will include a vertical fencing system on both sides of the bridge.

NASCAR San Diego (which is really Coronado)

Some exciting news…. NASCAR is coming to Coronado.  NASCAR teamed with the Navy to bring NASCAR events to Naval Base Coronado during the weekend of June 19-21, 2026 (Father’s Day Weekend).  The races will happen on the base, and the event will not only bring a lot of visitors to our island, but it will also bring both national and international attention to Coronado.   Amy Lupo, President of NASCAR San Diego, provided information about the planned NASCAR events at our City Council meeting on September 16th.  The NASCAR event will include additional events with the Navy throughout the weekend in celebration of the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Navy.  Ms. Lupo mentioned that NASCAR is working with the Navy, the Cities of Coronado and San Diego, the Port of San Diego, and Caltrans to develop a traffic and transportation plan for the event, the venue layout, and to establish hospitality and volunteer partnerships, and that they plan to provide regular updates on these plans to the community. Stay tuned because tickets are expected to go on sale sometime soon.

Senate Bill 79

We were fortunate this time.  Senate Bill 79 was passed by our state legislature and is sitting on Governor Newsom’s desk, awaiting his signature.  SB 79, is a state-mandated order that when signed, will take control out of the hands of local jurisdictions and allow high-density housing near transit stops within a half-mile radius of a high-frequency commuter rail, light rail or bus line. 

The first version of the bill included ferry landings.  Depending on the proximity from the Coronado Ferry Landing, redevelopment could have resulted in multi-family housing up to 75 feet tall.  This would have resulted in more congestion, more traffic, increased demand for parking, etc.  This would have had a detrimental effect, changing the character of our community, and the City of Coronado would have had no authority to stop it.  Thankfully SB 79 was amended several times before being approved by our state legislature and the immediate threat to Coronado was removed from the bill.

Coronado has two MTS bus routes, which are 901 and 904.  Currently, neither one of these bus routes qualify as a high-frequency transit stop, so they are exempt from SB 79.  That said, we will need to monitor future bills in Sacramento and hope that SANDAG does not update the regional transportation plan to include our bus routes as high frequency.

Tijuana River Sewage Crisis

Thankfully I have more good news to share than bad news on this topic.

So, I will start with the bad news.  The sewage crisis is not over.

However, the good news is that much has been accomplished in recent months.  This includes work to expand the capacity at our International Boundary Wastewater Treatment Plant located north of the border and managed by IBWC.  Funding is in place, contracts have been executed, and physical work on site has begun.  To date, this has resulted in the capacity of our plant being increased from 25 MGD to now 35 MGD.   The construction that is ongoing at the site will eventually expand the plant to a capacity of 50 MGD, with a short-term capacity of 75 MGD.

Perhaps even more importantly, on July 24, 2025, our U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin met with Secretary of the Environment and National Resources of Mexico Alicia Bárcena Ibarra at the Council of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation (CEC), to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the United States and Mexico to address and solve the decades-long Tijuana River sewage crisis.  The intent of this agreement was to outline specific actions the United States and Mexico will take to implement a permanent 100% solution to end this crisis.  Both parties agreed to have the work completed no later than December 31, 2027.  I know that is over two years away, but this work will take time to complete, and we should see incremental improvements between now and the end of 2027.