Officials in Mexico Fail to Work Out Sewage Plan

U.S. and Mexican officials failed Tuesday to hammer out a plan to treat Tijuana’s sewage, but agreed to continue their negotiations here today.

At the request of the United States, the Inter-American Development Bank delayed a vote that had been scheduled for today on a $46.4-million loan Mexico is seeking to finance a Tijuana waterworks project that could double the amount of sewage the city would generate. The waterworks would raise from roughly 50% to roughly 80% the number of homes and businesses in Tijuana that are connected to the city’s supply of drinking water.

The waterworks and sewage treatment are “inextricably related,” said Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado).

“We want to see the IDB coordinate construction of the disposal system at the same time as the water system,” Hunter said. “The two aspects of the project have to proceed concurrently, otherwise we are going to have a devastating problem.”

The U.S. delegation entered the meeting Tuesday morning hoping it could go home with a final sewage treatment plan, but the members’ optimism waned by the end of the day.

“There is the recognition that we may not carry home all the bacon,” said George High, director of the Office of Mexican Affairs at the U.S. State Department.

“The Mexican government and we would like to show we have accomplished something, and so far we haven’t accomplished anything, but by God we will,” High said.

U.S. officials want a Tijuana sewage treatment plan included in the waterworks loan agreement because they feel that is their only leverage to insure that Mexico follows through with construction, maintenance and expansion of a sewage system.

High said the bank’s vote on the loan was delayed for a week and could be delayed again. “We don’t want to vote until we have agreement that we can go on,” High said.

The U.S. delegation said it was told in the closed-door meeting that none of the members of the Mexican delegation was authorized to discuss the loan. U.S. officials did not know if Mexico would be willing or able to discuss the loan today.

U.S. Ambassador John Gavin addressed the binational meeting, saying he had just met with Mexican Foreign Minister Bernardo Sepulveda on this and other issues and that the sewage problem is of great concern at the highest levels of both governments, according to a U.S. participant in the talks.

Gavin had threatened that the United States would veto the bank loan if Mexico did not resolve the sewage problem, but State Department officials now admit that the United States does not have the power to veto the loan.

The Mexican officials declined to comment on the negotiations, saying they preferred to wait until the talks conclude.

Tijuana produces nearly 20 million gallons of sewage daily but has no sewage treatment plant. San Diego treats about 13 million gallons of Tijuana’s sewage daily under a longstanding agreement to help Mexico out on an emergency basis. The rest of Tijuana’s waste water is dumped untreated into the ocean, south of the city.

Periodically over the years, the pipes carrying Tijuana’s sewage have broken, spilling millions of gallons of raw effluent into the Tijuana River, and it eventually pollutes U.S. beaches. Because of the spills, the Imperial Beach oceanfront has often been closed to swimmers, sometimes for months at a time, since the 1940s.

The United States originally had hoped to build a binational plant to treat Mexican sewage on the U.S. side of the border, but Mexico last week announced a unilateral plan to build the waterworks and sewage system.

The two-pronged Mexican proposal calls for building a treatment plant four miles south of Tijuana within a year, and a second plant to the east at the confluence of the Alamar and Tijuana rivers within five years. Mexico says its plants, made up of aeration ponds to cleanse the waste, would be cheaper to build and operate than a plant in the United States, and would allow Mexico to easily reclaim the treated waste water for agriculture.

During more than five hours of talks at the Mexican Foreign Ministry, the two sides discussed technical aspects of the Mexican plan and Mexican officials listened to a list of U.S. concerns.

According to one observer who sat in on the meeting, the U.S. delegation asked the Mexicans for certain assurances:

- Mexico would continue to use San Diego’s sewage treatment system until the Tijuana one is built, and would pay San Diego for the service.

- If one of the new Mexican plants were to break down, U.S. technicians--through the International Boundary and Water Commission--would be allowed to help with repairs. In the past, sewage line repairs have been handled unilaterally by Mexico and have taken what U.S. officials contend is a long time.

- IBWC members from both sides of the border would be able to inspect the new Mexican plants.

- A water reclamation system would be in place at the eastern plant before it opened to ensure that treated sewage would not be dumped in the river.

“The treated waste in Mexico would flow through the rivers into the United States and would not meet California (waste water) standards,” said one observer at the meeting who asked not to be identified. He said the U.S delegation was concerned that any failure in the eastern plant would result in a sewage spill north of the border.

The observer said that U.S. technicians were skeptical of Mexican claims that aeration facilities in their plants would not have to be cleaned of sludge for 10 to 12 years. And they were concerned that the hilly area where Mexico intends to build its western ponds would be unstable.

The U.S. delegation also wanted to be assured that Mexico has the funds needed to build and maintain a sewage system and that the plants would be built and expanded as needed.

The U.S. delegation wants three written agreements from Mexico. In addition to including the sewage plan in the IDB loan agreement, the United States wants a written annex to a presidential agreement signed by Presidents Reagan and Miguel de la Madrid in La Paz, Mexico, in August, 1983, and an accord between the EPA and its Mexican counterpart.

Hunter, who also sat in on the meetings, said he would like Mexico to agree on a date to discuss the Mexicali-Calexico sewage problem. The aeration ponds at the Mexicali sewage treatment plant do not work and, consequently, the untreated waste there spills into the New River, which flows north into Calexico.

On the U.S. side of the border, state prison officials are seeking to solve another sewage problem that threatens to delay use of a state prison--now under construction on Otay Mesa and scheduled to open this summer--for up to a year.

Prison authorities and local governmental officials, wary of anything that may exacerbate an already complex problem, have not yet agreed on how best to provide sewage lines to the new prison.

City officials want to connect the prison to existing treatment facilities adjacent to the international border, south of Chula Vista. Prison authorities, however, have been suggesting a permanent line directly from the prison to the city of Chula Vista.

The opening of the facility could be delayed, legislative sources said, while all levels of government explore solutions to the problem.

Last month, state lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Prison Construction and Operation rejected corrections officials’ plans to spend $1.5 million to $3 million on temporary, on-site sewage facilities to accommodate the first phase of the 2,200-bed prison.

Committee Chairman Robert Presley (D-Riverside) asked for a state audit on why the $140-million facility, five years in planning, has unsettled sewage plans so close to its scheduled opening.

If ordered, however, that audit would address the question of what went wrong, not what to do, an aide to the Joint Legislative Audit Committee said.

Times staff writer Kenneth F. Bunting in Sacramento contributed to this story.