This story aired in the July 30, 2025 episode of Crosscurrents.
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Today, we have the last story in our seven-part series on sea level rise in California. From the San Diego / Tijuana Border all the way up to Humboldt Bay, we’re visiting some of the people and places that are dealing with flooding, coastal erosion, and pollution… all made worse by rising tides. KALW’s Emergency and Disaster Preparedness reporter Wren Farrell is the lead producer on this series.
HANA BABA: Hi Wren.
WREN FARRELL: Hi Hana
HANA: Ok, last episode! Wow, congratulations on finishing the series. Should we do a quick recap for the listeners who haven’t had a chance to listen to the first six episodes?
WREN: Sure. So far we’ve heard three stories about flooding in different California communities. We’ve heard two stories about coastal erosion, and the things people are experimenting with to try to lessen its impacts — like revitalizing sand dunes. And we’ve heard from people down at the San Diego / Tijuana border who are dealing with a confluence of factors related to pollution, climate change, and of course, rising tides.
HANA: Lots in there.
WREN: LOTS!
HANA: So, where are we going today?
WREN: Today we’re going to Ormond Beach, in Oxnard, north west of Los Angeles.
HANA: Ok cool, I’ve never been but…
WREN: It’s a working class community that’s been severely impacted by pollution from local industries. There’s a beach there called Ormond Beach and a nearby wetland with a really robust ecosystem. A healthy wetland can serve as a natural flood barrier between the ocean and the town — but it’s been used as an unofficial dumping ground for decades. If the beach remains an industrial zone, advocates worry that as sea levels rise, toxic chemicals will spread further into the surrounding neighborhoods.
Reporting for KALW, in collaboration with KVCR, reporter Anthony Victoria has more.
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Sounds of birds and waves crashing on beach
REPORTER: I’m here at Ormond Beach on the Oxnard coast. A bunch of volunteers are doing a beach clean up. The weather is cool and breezy, with overcast skies. Maripas Jacobo welcomes volunteers and has them check in for the clean up.
JACOBO TO VOLUNTEER: It’s been a while huh?
VOLUNTEER: It has been a while.
JACOBO: A couple years!
VOLUNTEER: It has been a couple of years!
JACOBO: Too many. There’s conchas and café if you guys want some. And they have the waivers over there too.
REPORTER: She’s with the community group Coastal Keepers, which is sponsoring today’s event. Jacobo says Coastal Keepers are “homies helping homies.” They’re people who care about their community and want access to open space.
JACOBO: I think the beach here offers that. I mean, just hearing the birds chirp, feeling the sun on your skin, hearing the waves crashing, I think that does something psychologically to you. And I think for so many generations, we haven't really broken that cycle with our families of teaching them that it's okay to rest.
REPORTER: A lot of the area’s population is made up of working-class Latinos.
SERRANO: They don't really know that the beach is just walking distance. You know, all they know is work, home, work, home.
REPORTER: Juan Serrano also works with Coastal Keepers. I run into him dragging and tossing a mattress into a large garbage container.
REPORTER: A whole mattress, huh? Do you usually find stuff like this?
SERRANO: Oh yeah, this is common, sadly.
REPORTER: Serrano says, alongside other groups, Coastal Keepers has removed almost 85,000 pounds of trash since their first clean up in 2020.
SERRANO: Oh, man, I wish you were here, because you wouldn’t have seen the beach. You're like, “Where am I?” You wouldn't even think you're in California.
REPORTER: This beach has a history of being a sacrifice zone for industry. The Halaco metal recycling facility operated at Ormond for 40 years. The operator dumped heavy metals and radioactive waste.
It’s still an industrial corridor: for decades, the Ormond Beach power plant has contributed to coastal and air pollution. Oxnard’s wastewater facility also sits there.
Sounds of industrial plant
REPORTER: No matter where you are on the beach, you can always hear the low hum of industry.
Sounds of birds
REPORTER: Despite all that, this is an important natural location. The Ormond Beach wetlands is 1,500 acres of marshes, lagoons and estuaries. It’s a popular birding spot. Over 200 species of birds, including two rare species, use the site as a nesting and feeding ground. And Jacobo points out that the beach is a key part of Oxnard and Port Hueneme’s natural flood defense.
JACOBO: So wetlands are kind of like our natural, not man-made flood prevention system. When we have those really big high tides or it's a storm season, wetlands are kind of meant to absorb all of that shock, for lack of a better word, and kind of filter through it, so the rest of the city doesn’t get impacted by it.
REPORTER: Coastal Keepers believe that ongoing industrial development could make the wetlands unsuitable for both people and wildlife. In February, 80,000 gallons of sewage from a nearby processing plant spilled into the ocean. Coastal areas, including the wetlands, were closed for several days.
Now, concerns are resurfacing as officials grapple with the lingering effects of past and recent contamination, especially as sea level rise threatens the coast.
SERRANO: Last year in Ventura, we experienced some really bad tides where the waves just went beyond the neighborhood. So that was just the next city over. More of that, of the high tide is going to come in and wash upon infrastructure that I don't really think the city is ready for or prepared for.
Jacobo agrees. She says she isn’t sure there’s enough of an emphasis on sea level rise, locally.
JACOBO: We went to a meeting, the local coastal plan. I think we went to that a couple months ago. They were just showing us the diagrams of how sea level rise would affect our coast, depending on certain feet. But other than that, there's really not too much of an emphasis, I would say here locally, like, and I don't know if that's lack of access to education and knowledge as well.
REPORTER: In April, the state lands commission held a hearing at Oxnard City Hall. High school students and community organizers made a lot of the public comments.
They were there to urge the state lands commission to deny a lease extension for a water conduit for the Ormond Beach Power Plant. The conduit uses seawater to cool down the gas plant when it's in use during peak season.
STUDENT SPEAKER: We come to you to demand that you reject the lease and shut down the Ormond Beach power plant once and for all. To, for once, put life over money.
Odette Moran is with the Central Coast Alliance United for a Sustainable Economy, or CAUSE.
MORAN: It could be so many things in our community: Did you hear those loud noises at 3am? Did you wake up from those explosions? It could be the power plant. It could be the semi trucks. I really feel that sentiments drop to my gut, as I really feel this impending sense of doom whenever we face that. This is a reality.
REPORTER: Moran told members of the commission that young people in Oxnard are frustrated by promises to clean up polluting industries that never seem to leave. In a follow up interview, they said they’re worried there isn’t a sense of urgency from industry and stakeholders to take action before flooding hits their neighborhoods.
MORAN: It's very scary to even dare to think about what these next generations are going to be like, or this next generation is going to be like, knowing that there is so much waste, so much industry, so much toxic chemicals in this area. If they're having this impact to our health now, it's unthinkable. I'm even like tearing up just thinking about it.
REPORTER: The frustrations shared by Moran and CAUSE have reached some decision makers. In 2021, the state’s coastal conservancy gave $1 million in federal funds to conservation groups to help restore endangered native plants and birds while caring for Ormond Beach.
And once operations end, the utility company that owns the Ormond Beach Power Plant has agreed to spend $25 million to shut it down and remove harmful materials. Another $10 million will be spent to develop a future public access park where the plant stands.
Sounds of birds and waves crashing
REPORTER: Things are moving forward. Still, there’s a lot of work to do. Back at the beach, Maripas Jacobo says it's a tough balance between acknowledging the reality of climate change and motivating people to keep fighting.
JACOBO: But how do we be proactive in it where we're not scaring and freaking people out when they already have 10 million other things to freak out about.
REPORTER: She says Coastal Keepers is lobbying policy makers, but not waiting around. Instead, they’re rallying their community to fight fear and turn knowledge into action.
JACOBO: We can educate the next gen, you know, the older folks, whoever, because we came from a program where we were being educated, but we weren't being inspired. And so I feel like that's what we really want to do, is educate, inspire, but not alarm.
REPORTER: Jacobo says she’s hoping to find the right mix between raising awareness and sparking hope.