Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography have unveiled a new forecast model that predicts the amount of sewage in the South Bay up to five days ahead of time, helping beachgoers judge their risk of getting sick.
At a press conference Tuesday, the lead oceanographer on the project, Falk Feddersen, said the pathogen forecast model works like a weather forecast for ocean sewage levels.
The model calculates the concentration of offshore sewage from Rosarito, Mexico to Coronado and into San Diego Bay.
Feddersen said the simulation also judges a swimmer’s likelihood of getting sick at different South Bay beaches, which correlates with sewage concentration.
The model color-codes different sections of beach as high, moderate or low risk depending on whether the sewage concentration in the water is greater than 0.1%, 0.1% to 0.001% or less than 0.001%, respectively.
A screenshot of the sewage forecasting tool — which can be found at pfmweb.ucsd.edu/ — developed by researchers at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography.South Bay sewage comes from two main sources: the Tijuana River Estuary and a wastewater treatment plant in Mexico six miles south of the border.
A number of factors are used in the simulation of sewage in the South Bay: the weather, wave forecasts, offshore ocean current and tide forecasts and the amount of sewage entering the ocean.
According to Feddersen, while beaches south of Imperial Beach are essentially always closed, there are still people who choose to enter the water at beaches to the north — at Silver Strand State Beach and Coronado — when they are under strong sewage-level advisories.
Sometimes the model goes against sewage advisories, predicting that a swimmer’s risk for illness is low because of the simulated sewage level — or vice versa, that swimmers face a high risk for illness despite there being no advisory.
According to Feddersen, the model is meant to supplement advisories against swimming.
“What we’re doing is we’re providing a forecast that can help people understand why a beach may be closed and also make then make plans about going to the beach,” Feddersen.
According to Feddersen, the team repeatedly measured the model’s predictions against sewage data collected almost every day by San Diego County at three locations — in Imperial Beach, Coronado and along Silver Strand — and found that the simulated levels and reality had a strong correlation.
“They have a correlation of 0.54 on the fifth day of the forecast,” Feddersen said. “And this implies good skill in forecasting the sewage plumes.”
Feddersen said the simulation takes five hours to run on computer cluster with the power of 53 laptops working together.
“It runs most of the time, probably 90% of days,” Feddersen said, adding that when the does model crash, it is usually because NOAA or another source did not provide the necessary data that day.
Research for the sewage model was funded by the state of California, according to a Scripps press release.
Feddersen declined to comment about how the Trump Administration’s cuts to research funding would affect the sewage model or his lab.
Feddersen said he doesn’t recommend that people go into the water when there are advisories, but that people still choose to do so.
“This is sort of for planning purposes on the day of,” Feddersen said about the model, adding that more headstrong beachgoers — “like a 20 year old reckless surfer” — who disregard advisory signs at the beach might pay attention when the simulation predicts that swimmers are at a high risk for illness.
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