School Children Watch...Kazoo Band Plays...As Mayor Uses Skip Loader to Stop the TJ Sewage Flow
- thebabydel
- 10 minutes ago
- 8 min read
Operation Beaver Marked The 45th Anniversary Of A Bold Move To Keep The Imperial Beach Shore Open
Before he was a U.S. Congressman and a County Supervisor, Brian Bilbray was known for one action that demonstrated his commitment to his constituents and clean beaches. When Bilbray was mayor of Imperial Beach, he took a stand against sewage pollution from Mexico with Operation Beaver. This June marked the 45th anniversary of Operation Beaver, when Bilbray and the entire council attempted to dam the mouth of the Tijuana River and block sewage from entering the ocean using skip loaders.
Bilbray was a young man then, who was elected mayor after serving two years as a councilmember. He was not afraid to take risks and make bold statements, which is something he still does to this day. He remains convinced that this is what it takes to solve the problem of transboundary pollution that has been plaguing Imperial Beach and the South Bay since the 1930s.
Bilbray was elected mayor in 1978 and quickly learned what he calls “confrontational policy against bureaucracy.” In 1979, the city had a mosquito outbreak, and the federal government, which had taken over the slough area, would not allow the county health department to spray for mosquitoes. “That was my first run-in with the federal government and regulatory agencies,” he recalled. He was then told that if the county went down to spray for mosquitoes, they were going to be cited. Bilbray explained to them, “I have mothers coming down to the council chambers with 150 mosquito bites on their kids.”
He was told “that’s a sign of a healthy environment,” and also that if the county sprayed for mosquitoes, they would be arrested. “I said, ‘fine, I’m going to go down [and do it] and you arrest the mayor,’” he said.
With the help of a County Environmental Health employee, Bilbray learned how to use the pumps to spray for mosquitoes. “They weren’t using diesel fuel like in the old days, this was a thing called Golden Bear, a real light [product which] evaporated and did not have the real environmental impact,” he said. The federal government didn’t care which product he was going to use, so Bilbray told them he was going to spray the area himself. At that point, they realized he was serious and they backed off.
The following year, a major storm in January 1980 eroded the Tijuana Valley and destroyed the interceptor pipe that ran from Tijuana up to Pt. Loma. “We had 15 million gallons of raw sewage pouring down the Tijuana Valley and going out the mouth and closing the beaches,” recalled Bilbray, who was 29 years old at the time. His office wrote letters to the Water Quality Control Board, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the State Department, and each one of those organizations responded that it was not their jurisdiction. “We got this run around by everyone and their brother. Everybody said we’d love to help you, but it’s not our department, we don’t have jurisdiction here,” said Bilbray. He then found out some important information from the Environmental Health Department of the county. “Someone pointed out to me, ‘You do realize this is running through a wetland… and you do know that the protection of the wetlands is not under the endangered species… It’s under the Clean Water Act because the wetlands naturally cleanse the pollution by filtering through the sand and everything else the wetland does,’” recalled Bilbray. At that point, he realized that there was a resource in the wetlands that was not being utilized. “I did the background [search] and showed that the Seabees had been involved with opening and closing the river mouth in the past. They would send their people down to open it up whenever it silted in. The argument was, if it can be opened up, it can be closed,” he said.
Bilbray and the council made a decision. “We set a trap for the bureaucracy because we knew they didn’t want to answer, but if you gave them something to bite, someone to arrest or someone to give a ticket to they would want to get involved,” he said. The council decided to send a formal notice to all of the agencies they had previously contacted, who had stated that it was not within their jurisdiction and they could not assist.
“We know according to your letter dated such and such and we quoted their statement, that this is not your jurisdiction, but we just want you to know that we’re going to go down there [June 19] at 10 o’clock in the morning we are going to dam up the mouth of the Tijuana sloughs. But seeing that this is not your jurisdiction, this is just a courtesy,” recalled Bilbray.
“The whole idea was we were going to set this off. What I didn’t know [was that] I set my council off.” Bilbray had to fly up north to take care of city business, and while he was away, the other four members of the council did a press conference and announced the date they were going to work on Operation Beaver without telling him. “I flew back out and they had already laid the cards out, so we had to follow through. If nothing else, we were drawing the line in the sand,” he said.
When Bilbray found out what had happened, he had the entire council go to the Public Works yard and learn how to drive the skip loaders. While the 10 o’clock time was already announced, Bilbray told the council to meet at 4 a.m. and roll down the streets of Imperial Beach on the skip loaders and start working on moving the sand.
The council asked why so early? Because they think they are going to stop us at 10 o’clock, we’ll have this project half done by 10 o’clock, and so we were out there at the crack of dawn and started moving stuff,” said Bilbray.
What no one had realized was that Operation Beaver was so high profile that the local schools let the kids out to see what was happening and cheer the council on. “We had the senior citizen program show up with a kazoo band. The whole thing took on a bit of a circus feel,” he recalled.
While Bilbray and the council started moving sand to dam the mouth of the river, a man went up to him and told him to cease and desist. “I said, ‘Do you have the jurisdiction to stop us?’ And he said yes. So you’ll be responsible if there is an encephalitic breakout, if we get cholera, if we get the diseases, if kids are getting sick?” Bilbray asked him. The man answered that his agency will be responsible, not he personally. Bilbray told him he didn’t want to talk to him and drove away in the skip loader to continue the work.
In the meantime, a group of young men Bilbray knew well and others who were fellow lifeguards staged a sit-in protest to keep him from going any further. “It’s funny how people perceived it because later, I had friends calling me from out of town who saw it on the news,” he said.
Because they knew Bilbray was friends with the protesters, some thought the whole thing had been staged. Bilbray said there was a lot of tension and disagreement among the friends about what the federal government was going to do with the estuary, the slough, and whether it was going to be preserved. Then a fight broke out between the lifeguards and the Parks and Recreation employees.
Finally, a local farmer named Danny Marshall went to Bilbray and asked him, “Mayor, you’re the product of the 60s, how do you do crowd control?” The answer was water. Bilbray made sure the bucket of the skip loader had no rocks; he scooped water and got ready to dump it on the protesters. The group did not realize what he was going to do until Bilbray hit a bump and water spilled. Some of the protesters scattered, but one of them, Benny Holt, was sitting in a lotus position and didn’t move. Bilbray put the scooper under him and moved him. He recalls telling him, “Benny, you know I won’t hurt you.”
When the federal agents tried to stop him, Bilbray’s line was, “Will you personally take responsibility?”
“Three of them said no The fourth guy, he outmaneuvers me, and he said: ‘Mayor, can we just talk? I’ll do anything humanely possible,’” recalled Bilbray. The two agreed that something would be done within seven days, or Bilbray would be back with the skip loaders. And just like that, Operation Beaver was over. Within three days, equipment was brought in and the interceptor was fixed. Bilbray said the fix had been discussed for six months, but nothing had happened.
“The key was the children were getting out of school for the summer. The bureaucrats were saying, just keep the kids out of the beach. They didn’t understand this is a beach town, you live for the beach,” said Bilbray. “The beach was the only reason you existed.” Bilbray’s reasoning was to have a clean beach for the kids, and the only thing he could do was to create an emergency tourniquet. “And that was to close off the river, back the sewage up the river. That was the only thing left for us,” he said.
More heat was coming for Bilbray after Operation Beaver. During that time, Bilbray was serving on the California Coastal Commission, and the issue in Imperial Beach was brought up to the board. “We needed to do an investigation. The attorney general needed to investigate the activity of Mayor Bilbray,” he recalled. At first, he wanted to abstain from a vote, but the board told him to do whatever he felt comfortable with.
“No, I’m not going to abstain. I’m going to make a motion that we investigate Mayor Bilbray,” Bilbray recalls saying.
The next month, the investigation report was released. Bilbray still smiles when he tells the story. “Who says lawyers don’t have a sense of humor? The first report said, first of all, there was a declared state of emergency by the city of Imperial Beach Second, there was no permanent structure made. Third of all, if Bilbray wants to have a sandcastle contest, he can bring his shovel and you can bring yours. That was in the official report…The blockage wasn’t completed, but it did sort of put the heat on. The fact is, right now, we’re still looking at an emergency tourniquet…Two years later, the sloughs did what we were doing; it blocked itself off, and none of the flows reached the ocean until the Seabees came down and opened it up,” said Bilbray.
For the rest of the summer after Operation Beaver, the beaches stayed open, and the kids enjoyed the ocean.
Alessandra Selgi-Harrigan | July 21, 2025 | Coronado Eagle & Journal VOL. 115, NO. 27 - July 2, 2025
EDITOR'S NOTE: I love this story and only wish that I could have witnessed it in person.
Those must have been exciting times for all involved.
Mayor Brian Bilbray was in his late 20s when he staged this. What better way to get the government to acknowledge your pollution crisis?
I found another great photo from 1980 of the action in progress.
Where are they all now?
Brian Bilbray is currently 75 years old and has served a multitude of government positions.
Serge Dedina, PHD, is 61years old now. He is the Executive Director of Wildcoast, an international conservation team that conserves coastal and marine ecosystems. He was Mayor of Imperial Beach from 2014 to 2022.
Ben Holt is 82 years old now. A SDSU graduate, he was active for 50 years as an Imperial Beach lifeguard and spent 53 years coaching Track & Field at Mar Vista High.
Jack Burns in an unknown as to where he is today. I couldn't find enough conclusive evidence that I was sure I had the same Jack Burns. Anyone out there have an update on Jack?
Comments