U.S., Mexico Digging Into Proposed Sewage Plant

U.S. officials meeting with their Mexican counterparts here today will seek assurances that a proposed sewage treatment system in Tijuana will be reliable and adequately maintained by the Mexican government to prevent future dumping of the city’s waste water into San Diego.

Fitzhugh Green, associate administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, said he expects the two sides to decide during this meeting on the type of plant to be built to treat Tijuana’s approximately 20 million gallons of sewage daily.

The U.S. government had proposed a binational plant just north of the border to treat Tijuana’s sewage, but the Mexican government returned last week with its own proposal for a Mexican-owned and -operated site south of Tijuana. The Mexican proposal is part of a $91-million water and sewage treatment plant for which the government is seeking about $46 million from the Inter-American Development Bank.

“We want to know that Californians will indeed be protected against the present situation in which millions of gallons of sewage pour into (San Diego’s Point Loma) treatment plant,” Green said. He said the U.S. government also wants assurances against “maverick spills” and is concerned about the large increase in the water supply, which might contribute to the problem.

Tijuana has no sewage treatment system at all. San Diego treats about 13 million gallons daily under a longstanding emergency agreement, and the rest is dumped untreated into the ocean.

Frequent breaks in Tijuana’s sewer mains over the years have dumped raw sewage into the Tijuana River and the gullies along the border that carry it into the United States and onto U.S. beaches. The waterworks Mexico has planned could double the city’s sewage, as more neighborhoods are connected to the pipelines.

The Inter-American Development Bank would require Mexico to ensure environmental protection before the bank would grant the loan. U.S. Ambassador John Gavin wanted to carry that a step further, threatening that the United States would veto the loan if Mexico did not act on the sewage problem. But some U.S. officials admitted privately that the United States does not have the power for such a veto.

Officials who asked not to be identified said they were doubtful that the United States could get strong assurances from the Mexican government about a sewage plant Mexico would build in its country.

But Green said the Mexican government appeared to be negotiating in good faith, to satisfy both U.S. and bank concerns.

An official from the Mexican Foreign Ministry, who asked not to be identified, said that in the meeting today “we are going to tell them yes. We will build it in the time period we have said and yes we will maintain it, and yes it will function as it should.”

He said the proposed treatment system has a sound technological base and is in the government’s budget. He insisted that although the sewage problem has dragged on for decades, Mexico and the United States have a history of resolving border resource and pollution issues and that “the time has come to do something about this problem.”

He said the successes along the nearly 2,000-mile border include five dams that have been built with binational support, a binational sewage treatment plant in Nogales, Ariz., and a U.S.-built canal to reduce the salt content of Colorado River water that runs off from U.S. farms. That salty water used to flow onto Mexican farmland and damage crops.

Mexico’s proposal calls for building two sewage treatment plants with aeration ponds to cleanse waste water. The first plant would be built within a year four miles south of Tijuana and would treat about 50 million gallons of sewage a day. A second plant to the east would be built within five years at the confluence of the Tijuana and Alamar rivers to treat 25 million gallons daily.

The foreign ministry official said the Mexican plants were preferable to the U.S. proposal because they would be less expensive to build and operate.

It is estimated that a binational plant to treat 60 million gallons daily would cost about $60 million initially, half to be paid by each government. The Mexican official did not have a precise figure for the cost of the Mexican treatment system, but said the plant’s first phase--which is half of the southern plant--would cost about $5 million.

He said the United States has stricter standards for disinfecting and deodorizing sewage, which makes it more expensive to treat. And, he said, Mexico wants to reclaim the treated water for agriculture, and the highly chlorinated waste water from the United States would have limited use.

Green of the EPA would not say how the U.S. government hoped to secure quality assurance from Mexico. He said that after the two sides met in Tijuana last week, U.S. officials had some questions about maintenance and whether the ponds could operate on the hilly terrain where they were proposed.

Some U.S. officials said they still prefer a binational plant in the United States because they believe it is more conducive to the geography--San Diego is downhill from Tijuana--and because they say they could assure the system’s maintenance. They said, however, that not only does Mexico seem determined to go ahead with its plan, but they felt that Americans would not want to pay for a plant now that the Mexicans have agreed to do so.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) has said that if Mexico goes ahead with its plan he would like to see a backup plant built in the United States. But one U.S. official said it was highly unlikely that federal money would be forthcoming for that.

“With the present budget-cutting atmosphere in Washington, they don’t want to spend a nickel on this,” the official said.

The U.S. delegation, headed by Gavin and Green, includes other representatives of the EPA, the State Department and the International Boundary and Water Commission. Also attending the meeting will be Hunter and representatives of Mayor Roger Hedgecock, Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.), Rep. Jim Bates (D-San Diego), Gov. George Deukmejian and San Diego County Supervisor Brian Bilbray.

The U.S. and Mexican officials plan to meet again Feb. 26 in Tijuana to discuss this and other border environmental issues.