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SAN DIEGO, CA — In honor of Military Appreciation Month, veterans and up to three guests can get free admission to SeaWorld San Diego. Veterans can register for complimentary one-day admission through May 11 and have until May 26 to visit the San Diego theme park with their free tickets.

Active-duty military members and their guests can also receive free single-day tickets all year long through the company's Waves of Honor program, which salutes active-duty military members, veterans and their families with special pricing and promotions throughout the year.

"We are proud to honor active-duty military, veterans and their families with a complimentary visit to one of our parks," said Marc Swanson, chief executive officer of United Parks & Resorts.

"We are incredibly grateful to all members of our military for their commitment and dedication to serving our country," Swanson said. "The Waves of Honor program extends a small token of our appreciation to those who are serving or who have served. We look forward to welcoming military service members, veterans and their families for a fun-filled day in one of our parks."

For more than 20 years, SeaWorld has offered complimentary park access to members of the U.S. military. More than 10 million guests — active-duty military members, veterans and their families — have received free admission to the company's parks through the program.

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Active-duty military members and veterans can register at WavesofHonor.com.

CDCR's Office of Correctional Safety and law enforcement agencies have been notified and are assisting in the search for Nick A. Lopez.

City News Service, News Partner

|Updated Mon, Apr 21, 2025 at 1:27 pm PT

SAN DIEGO, CA — California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation officials continue to search Monday for an incarcerated man who walked away from a Male Community Reentry Program in San Diego.

Correction officials were alerted to the disappearance of Nick A. Lopez at approximately 2:40 p.m. Friday after he removed his GPS device, CDC officials said. A search was immediately launched and corrections officials conducted an emergency count of the facility, confirming Lopez was missing.Lopez is Latino, 5 feet 11 inches tall and weighs 250 pounds. He has black hair and brown eyes.

Authorities say Lopez was last seen wearing black jeans and a black and white sweater/jacket.

He was received from San Diego County on Sept. 13, 2023. Lopez was sentenced to five years, four months for vehicle theft with prior vehicle-related theft conviction and possessing/owning a firearm by felon/addict -- both second-strike offenses-- according to corrections authorities. He has been housed at MCRP-San Diego since March 4, 2025.

CDCR's Office of Correctional Safety and local law enforcement agencies have been notified and are assisting in the search for Lopez.

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Anyone who sees Lopez or knows of his whereabouts was asked to contact Special Agent Brian Hernandez at 619-666-5522, call 911 or contact any law enforcement agency.

The MCRP allows eligible offenders committed to state prison to serve the end of their sentences in the re-entry center and provides them with the programs and tools necessary to transition from custody to the community. It is a voluntary program for male offenders who have two years of less left to serve.

Since 1977, 99 % of the incarcerated people who have escaped or walked away from an adult institution, camp, in-state contract bed or Community Rehabilitative Program Placement have been apprehended, correction officials said.

— City News Service

In recent years, city after city across San Diego County has rushed to pass its own version of a Tenant Protection Ordinance, or TPO. Chula Vista, San Diego, and Imperial Beach have all followed this trend, layering new requirements on top of state law.

But while these local ordinances may sound like progress, they’re actually causing serious housing problems — and doing more harm than good.

Let’s be clear: housing providers are already following strict rules under California’s existing state law, Assembly Bill 1482. That law sets statewide standards for rent increases, eviction protections, and more. So why are cities now adding another layer of local red tape?

The result is a confusing patchwork of inconsistent rules, deadlines, notices, and legal terms that vary from city to city. For big companies with legal teams and compliance departments, that might be manageable. However, that’s less than 30% of the market. For the typical housing provider — someone who owns one or two houses, condos or apartments — it’s a nightmare.

One Northern California homeowner moved back into her San Diego house, thinking she had followed state law by providing the standard exemption notice — only to learn she had missed a separate city requirement. She’s now facing a lawsuit for more than $300,000.

Here’s another example. Under San Diego’s TPO, if a tenant moves out under certain conditions, housing providers could be required to track them down and offer the unit back — even five years later. That’s not just unrealistic, it’s unworkable.

At the Southern California Rental Housing Association, we’ve had to create 16 new forms just to help our members stay compliant with the three local TPOs. Sixteen! That includes different rental agreements, exemption notices, termination forms, and disclosure addendums. On top of all that, many have required wording that must be printed in a specific font size or delivered in hard copy.

Even experienced housing providers are struggling to keep up. If you have renters in San Diego, the rules are different than in Chula Vista. And different still in Imperial Beach. The cities claim these ordinances are about fairness and stability — but where’s the fairness in expecting landlords to operate under three different rulebooks plus state law?

The irony is that these burdens discourage the very thing our region desperately needs: more housing. When providers feel like the deck is stacked against them, they’re less likely to invest in their properties and more likely to sell. The people who get hurt the most are renters.

We were encouraged by the city of San Diego’s recent announcement that 2024 was a banner year for housing downtown, with nearly 1,900 new homes completed and almost 1,700 more on the way. That progress matters. More housing helps stabilize rents and expands options for renters — exactly what we need.

But we can’t afford to stop there. We need more housing across the entire region, not just downtown. And we need policies that support — not punish — the landlords who help provide it. When the rules become so burdensome that people stop offering rental housing, the whole community loses.

Let’s focus on real solutions, like expanding rental assistance programs and reducing barriers to building new homes. A good start would be expanding the areas where multifamily rentals are allowed. These are policies that help renters without driving providers away. Local governments should be working with housing providers, not against them.

It may be politically popular to pass laws that sound like tenant protections, but when those policies make it harder to provide housing, we all lose in the long run.

Alan Pentico is executive director of the Southern California Rental Housing Association.

SAN DIEGO (AP) — The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Tuesday that Mexico must stop the flow of billions of gallons of sewage and toxic chemicals from Tijuana that has polluted the Pacific Ocean off neighboring Southern California, closing beaches and sickening Navy SEALs who train in the water.

Lee Zeldin made the demand during an Earth Day trip to the California-Mexico border, where he toured a plant in San Diego County that treats the sewage as a secondary facility and flew along the frontier to see the Tijuana River. He also was scheduled to meet with SEALs.

Zeldin said that in the next day or so, his agency will present Mexico a to-do list of projects to resolve the decades-long environmental crisis, but he stopped short of specifying how the Trump administration would hold Mexico accountable if it does not act.

The problem is “top of mind” for President Donald Trump, Zeldin said, while adding that they have not talked about possibly imposing tariffs if nothing is done.

“We’re going to know whether or not Mexico is going to do its part to resolve it, and then we’ll go from there, as far as strategy and tactics,” Zeldin said.

Alicia Bárcena, Mexico’s Environment and Natural Resources secretary, said her country also wants to resolve the problem. She met with Zeldin the previous evening and said they made progress in finding solutions.

“We are here because we want to solve this,” Bárcena said in a statement in Spanish. “Not only so there is no untreated wastewater on Mexican beaches, but in the United States as well.”

The 120-mile (195 km)-long Tijuana River runs near the coast in Mexico and crosses into Southern California, where it flows through Navy-owned land and out to the Pacific.

As Tijuana’s wastewater treatment plants have aged and its population and industry have boomed, an increasing amount of toxins have made their way into the river and into San Diego County — since 2018, more than 100 billion gallons of raw sewage laden with industrial chemicals and trash.

The pollution has sickened not only swimmers, surfers and lifeguards but also schoolchildren, Border Patrol agents and others who do not even go in the water. Scientists say the sewage is vaporized when it foams up and enters the air people breathe.

The Navy is reviewing whether to relocate its training site for SEAL candidates after the Naval Special Warfare Center reported 1,168 cases of acute gastrointestinal illnesses of its recruits from 2019 to 2023.

California beaches near the border have been closed more often than not over the past four years.

Since 2020 more than $653 million in funds have been allocated to address the issue, but the crisis has continued largely because of delays by the Mexican government, Zeldin said. He added that he and Trump are hopeful that will change under the relatively new administration of President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last October.

Zeldin said that after meeting with Mexico officials in San Diego for 90 minutes, he was left with the impression that Sheinbaum and her environmental secretary want to have a “strong collaborative relationship.”

“What’s being communicated by the new Mexican president is an intense desire to fully resolve this situation,” Zeldin said. But he made clear that he wants Mexico to step up.

“There’s no way that we are going to stand before the people of California and ask them to have more patience and just bear with all of us as we go through the next 10 or 20 or 30 years of being stuck in 12 feet of raw sewage and not getting anywhere,” he said. “So we are all out of patience.”

Flanked by lawmakers from both parties, Zeldin noted that cleanup efforts have rare bipartisan support.

Zeldin visited the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, which was built with funds from both countries to treat 25 million gallons per day as a secondary plant on the U.S. side.

Mexico is working on several wastewater treatment projects to reduce the flow and make major upgrades to its existing plants. Bárcena said the now-repaired San Antonio de los Buenos plant, which went back to operating at full capacity this month, should make a difference.

But Zeldin said Mexico must complete a number of other projects, including installing floodgates to collect trash in Tijuana. Another one being considered would divert 10 million gallons of sewage away from the shore.

___

Associated Press writer María Verza in Mexico City contributed.

San Diego has a new official flower, following the City Council's unanimous vote Tuesday to replace the non-native carnation with the native western blue-eyed grass.

The campaign to change San Diego's official flora came about through the San Diego Bird Alliance, which ventured away from its typical avian interest to launch the Your City, Your Flower campaign in March.

Council President Pro Tem Kent Lee thanked the bird alliance, who "truly put the petal to the metal" to make sure every ZIP code in the county had an opportunity to vote, he said.

From iconic flower fields to tucked-away garden escapes, The Golden State is bursting into bloom. California Live correspondent Laila Muhammad joins lifestyle expert Elycia Rubin at The Huntington in San Marino to round up the top spots to catch spring in full color.

Coinciding with the NCAA basketball tournaments, the SDBA created a bracket-style tournament to choose between eight native plants -- black sage, bladderpod, blue elderberry, blue-eyed grass, bush sunflower, California buckwheat, California rose and Cleveland sage.

Those eight were selected based on environmental benefits, Kumeyaay cultural significance, drought resistance, native status, conservation concerns and artistic potential, according to an alliance statement.

"Native plants represent the backbone of our ecosystem," City Council President Joe LaCava said.

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The Barona Band of Mission Indians provided the Kumeyaay words for the flowers.

"This initiative aims to replace the current non-native carnation with a flower that truly represents our local ecosystems and supports our native wildlife," said Savannah Stallings, conservation advocacy coordinator for the San Diego Bird Alliance.

The western blue-eyed grass, known as Sisyrinchium bellum in its scientific or Latin name, pasto des ojitos azules in Spanish and kuushaaw in the Kumeyaay language, grows in California and Oregon and west of the Sierra Nevada, with its range extending south into Baja California.

It is not a true grass, but instead a member of the iris family. Stems can extend up to 24 inches -- but are usually shorter -- and end in a small bluish-purplish bloom. It thrives in meadows, freshwater wetlands and along streams.

The plant bested Cleveland sage, California buckwheat and just edged out the bush sunflower by 34 votes -- 1,204 to 1,170 -- to take the floral crown. More than 7,700 people voted in the tournament in the Elite Inflorescence, Final Flora and Corolla Championship rounds.

"Blue-eyed grass works great at the edge of landscaped areas, is a fire-resistant plant, and uses a corm to store resources underground," a city document said. "In 1908, an ethnographer recorded Luiseño Native Americans taking the roots of blue-eyed grass as a purgative. Delfina Cuero, a Kumeyaay ethnobotanist and author, wrote in her book that the plant was good for cramps."

San Diego adopted its previous official flower, the carnation, on April 28, 1964, via a secret ballot.

"San Diego County is the most biodiverse county in the nation, and this initiative aligns with the city's existing environmental commitments, including its designation as a Bee City and the mayor's Monarch pledge," SDBA Wildfire Resiliency Fellow Hailey Matthews said.