By Daniel Trotta
IMPERIAL BEACH, Calif./TIJUANA, Mexico (Reuters) – Every day, millions of gallons of sewage cascade through a canyon and into the Pacific Ocean, just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. As any San Diego surfer knows, summer waves coming in from the south will push the toxic drink north.
Meanwhile, millions more gallons of treated and untreated sewage flow down the Tijuana River and into the sea just north of the border.
When wind and currents conspire, the odor of fecal bacteria contaminates the picturesque San Diego County town of Imperial Beach, where Mayor Paloma Aguirre calls the discharges “the country’s biggest environmental and public health disaster that no one knows about.” “.
If it were the result of a hurricane or wildfire, rather than decades of neglect, the crisis could justify an emergency declaration, freeing up recovery funds to address environmental damage, the threat to public health, and the loss of tourism. .
Instead, beach lovers and politicians are distressed by prolonged efforts to improve infrastructure on both sides of the border.
The International Wastewater Treatment Plant, an overloaded and underfunded plant built on the U.S. side of the border to treat Mexican sewage, has buckled as the volume has been piped across the border over the past two years, but plant managers say it should work again. normal operations in August.
The Mexican state of Baja California says the most crucial repairs to Tijuana’s damaged sewage infrastructure will be completed shortly after, potentially putting an end to the worst of the spills. It plans to invest US$530 million in sewage infrastructure from 2023 to 2027.
“We are not only polluting the waters of the United States, but also those of Mexico,” said Kurt Honold, former mayor of Tijuana and now secretary of economy and innovation for Baja California. “Our kids want to swim at the beaches of Tijuana and Rosarito without getting sick.”
Immediately north of the U.S.-Mexico border wall that runs down to the sea, San Diego County health officials have effectively closed the beach for more than three consecutive years.
Further north, near the Imperial Beach pier, bright yellow signs warning “Keep Out of the Water” have been posted since 2021, depriving surfers of the waves and Imperial Beach of crucial summer tourism revenue.
Interviewed on the sunny beach, the mayor of Imperial Beach, herself a bodyboarder, said that if the crisis were affecting a wealthy, white city, it would have been resolved long ago by state and federal authorities.
“We’re mostly a working-class community; we’re mostly a brown community. We’re a frontier community,” said Aguirre, an environmentalist before entering politics.
STRONG INFRASTRUCTURE
The international plant belongs to the International Boundary and Water Commission, a body governed by U.S.-Mexico treaty agreements.
When operating properly, it treats 25 million gallons per day (1,095 liters per second).
But the plant wore out under pressure caused by infrastructure failures in Tijuana in 2022 and Tropical Storm Hilary a year ago, it said. Morgan Rogers, area operations manager for the IBWC San Diego field office. Sewage treatment has dropped to 22.7 million gallons per day this year.
“Every gallon we treat here is a gallon that doesn’t go into the ocean, whether it’s the river or south Tijuana,” Rogers said.
Rogers led Reuters on a recent visit when only one of the plant’s five primary tanks – each open-air with roughly the capacity of an Olympic-sized swimming pool – was working properly. As he spoke, a large bubble gurgled on the surface.
“Ugh, you can see some flow going through here,” Rogers said. “But we’re making good progress.”
In addition to the $30 million upgrade, the plant is about to undergo a $400 million expansion with federal funds to double capacity, Rogers said, but another $200 million will be needed to complete the work.
TIJUANA FIGHTS
About 10 km south of the border, a tunnel beneath the coastal road releases wastewater with the fury of a dam that has opened its spillway.
It’s an exit from San Antonio de los Buenos, Tijuana’s broken sewage treatment plant.
Mexico says a new $33.3 million plant under construction is scheduled to come into operation by September 30.
For now, the amount being dumped into the ocean remains in dispute. The IBWC estimates the flow at 35 million to 45 million gallons per day of raw sewage.
Baja California says the plant is discharging 23 million gallons per day (1,000 liters per second) of sewage that is minimally treated with chlorine. Mexico’s National Water Commission puts the number at 27 million gallons per day (1,200 liters per second).
Additionally, about 50 million gallons per day of sewage-contaminated water flows from the Tijuana River toward Imperial Beach, according to an IBWC river gauge.
About half is raw sewage and the rest is a mix of treated sewage, groundwater and drinking water from Tijuana’s leaky pipes, Rogers estimated.
Honold said Tijuana’s state infrastructure has suffered decades of neglect as the city’s population has grown from 65,000 in 1950 to about 2 million today.
Then Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Avila, elected in 2021, made sewer repairs a priority, Honold said.
“We’re sorry,” Honold said. “We will fix this and we are fixing it.”
(Reporting and writing by Daniel Trotta in Imperial Beach and Tijuana; additional reporting by Lizbeth Diaz in Mexico City; editing by Donna Bryson and Aurora Ellis)
