SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Several Southern California environmental groups staged a protest as Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin visited the San Diego area Tuesday morning.
The event called “Hands Off Earth” was organized as a way to denounce the Trump administration’s cutbacks on environmental protections and programs, said Sara Ochoa, programs director with Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation.
The demonstration took place outside the Marine Corps Recruiting Depot, where Zeldin held a news conference after touring the Tijuana River Valley and the International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
“We, as the environmental community, have a lot of concerns,” Ochoa said.
She worries the EPA and the Trump administration are cutting back many programs, including a multi-million-dollar grant to the Environmental Health Coalition in San Diego.
“It was granted $20 million to serve and fulfill 12 community driven projects and eight severely impacted regions of San Diego that have some of the worst air to breathe,” Ochoa said. “This EPA director and the Trump administration are cutting those funds and potentially threatening even the tax-exempt status of some nonprofits.”
Ochoa went on to say the EPA is now the “environmental destruction agency” as it plans to open national parks and protected areas to mining and excavation.
“These resources are worth protecting and we have to have policies for those purposes, but this administration is rolling those back — some of our national parks and our pristine lands like in New Mexico are slated for mineral extraction and instead of being open to the public, they’re going to be turned into mining sites.”
Ochoa and others are also concerned that under Zeldin, the EPA will cut back funding for mitigation programs to clean up pollution in the Tijuana River Valley where for decades, millions of gallons of sewage-tainted water has been flowing from Mexico into the United States along with trash, debris and toxic chemicals.
“They’re just going to say it’s a Mexico problem and it has to fix the problem,” Ochoa said.
The Transboundary Pollution Coalition for Advocacy and Healing, which is made up of 50 organizations on both sides of the border, issued the following statement about Zeldin’s visit and the need to fix the “crisis” in the Tijuana River Valley:
“We support solutions that will fix, prevent, and heal pollution in communities around the Tijuana River and coastline. The southernmost beach in San Diego County has been closed for over 1,200 consecutive days and just last week, the Tijuana River was officially designated the second most endangered river in the United States in 2025, highlighting the opportunity to come together and act with urgency.
“We need San Diego, California, United States and Mexican authorities to fund and implement immediate, commonsense solutions for a healthy Tijuana River. The Tijuana River pollution crisis is complex and international, now is the time to hold all policymakers accountable for common-sense solutions to fix the sewage, industrial waste, trash, hydrogen sulfide and other toxins in our river, ocean, and air; as well as prevent future impacts from climate change and heal our communities that are suffering the greatest harm.”
The Trump administration has said it is rolling back environmental protections and programs as a way to “power the great American comeback.”
According to the Los Angeles Times, the EPA plans to repeal or weaken 31 environmental regulations, including the principle known as the “endangerment finding,” which affirms that carbon dioxide emissions pose a threat to human health and welfare.
Last month Zeldin called it the “greatest and most consequential day of deregulation in U.S. history.”
Read: Read More