Sewage Talks Adjourn Without an Agreement

U.S. and Mexican officials adjourned after two days of closed-door negotiations here late Wednesday without agreeing on a plan for a Tijuana sewage treatment system.

U.S. representatives said they had been overambitious in expecting to sign a final agreement, but they added that they hope to approve one during a third meeting scheduled for Feb. 25 and 26 in Tijuana.

Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. State Department officials sat down Wednesday with Marcelo Javelly Girard, Mexican minister of ecology and urban development, to try to iron out some of the wrinkles in the negotiations and to set an agenda for the Tijuana meeting. The U.S. delegation complained Tuesday that the Mexicans had not included high-level officials in the talks.

“The talks are going on, and we are working out the details,” said Fitzhugh Green, EPA associate administrator. He said the EPA gave Ecology and Urban Development Ministry officials a proposed agreement, but that he does not expect to hear back from them for a week.

The Mexican government is not legally bound to negotiate with the United States over a sewage system planned for its own country.

Most of Tijuana’s nearly 20 million gallons of sewage daily is treated in San Diego, and much of the untreated waste is polluting U.S. border lands and beaches.

The United States has delayed a vote on and threatened to oppose an Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) loan that Mexico is seeking to expand Tijuana’s drinking water system, but does not have the power to block the loan.

While U.S. officials would prefer to see a binational plant treat Tijuana’s sewage on the U.S. side of the border, they are faced with a unilateral Mexican sewage plan, so they are trying to secure assurances that the system will be adequately built, maintained and expanded to meet growing demand.

“This is a Mexican initiative. We are simply taking advantage of their courtesy in allowing us to comment,” said one U.S. negotiator who asked not to be identified. “They can go ahead without us. It’s all on the Mexican side.”

Mexico plans to treat the sewage with a series of aeration ponds to cleanse the waste of bacteria. It has proposed building a western plant four miles south of the border within a year, and another plant to the east at the juncture of the Alamar and Tijuana rivers within five years.

The proposed eastern plant is one of the major points of contention between the two countries. U.S. officials say it could ultimately dump millions of gallons of treated sewage--or, if there is a malfunction, untreated sewage--into the Tijuana River, which flows into the United States.

“Our biggest concern is that the plant will function properly and that no treated or untreated sewage is discharged into the Tijuana River,” said a U.S. official.

Even when treated, Mexican sewage would not meet U.S. waste water standards.

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Coronado) said negotiators were discussing dividing the Mexican plan into separate agreements for an eastern and western plant, and then possibly the western plant could be included in the IDB loan agreement.

“I think we will go ahead with the west basin, have the IDB monitor and coordinate it so the water (project) doesn’t precede the sewage disposal phase. And we will agree to work right now on a plan for the east basin,” Hunter said.

He did not say whether the Mexicans had agreed to that proposal.

Mexican officials have said they do not want to comment until after the negotiations are concluded. They could not be reached for comment Wednesday night.

Hunter said the two sides were examining alternatives to an eastern plant, including running a pipeline north into the United States, then west across the flat U.S. border lands (Mexican land there is steep and rocky), and south again to a western plant.

Hunter said Mexican officials said they could complete the first phase of their western plant by next February. The plant would initially treat about 25 million gallons of sewage daily and ultimately about twice that amount.

Hunter also said the Mexicans told U.S. delegates that they expect to complete a pumping station in Playas de Tijuana by June to send sewage south from there. About 300,000 gallons of raw sewage daily now spills into the ocean at Playas, polluting the oceanfront at the U.S. border.

He said that sending the sewage south, where it still will be dumped untreated into the ocean, should allow San Diego County to lift its quarantines at Border Field State Park and Imperial Beach.

While the high-level officials met at the Ministry of Ecology and Urban Development, U.S. and Mexican representatives of the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) met at the Foreign Ministry to address other technical issues. They are trying to write a sewage treatment agreement that then could become the basis of an accord between the EPA and its Mexican counterpart, the Ministry of Ecology and Urban Development, at the next meeting.

Those two agencies are named as the lead enforcement agencies of an environmental agreement signed by Presidents Reagan and Miguel de la Madrid in La Paz, Mexico, in August, 1983.

The IBWC handles the day-to-day work of border sewage and water problems, but is dependent on the U.S. State Department and the Foreign Ministry in Mexico. It has no independent authority or funds.

Green said the IBWC, EPA and bank and treasury officials were working “in consonance with one another” on the sewage issue.

He also said U.S. and Mexican officials kept in close contact during the day Wednesday with their representatives at the Inter-American Development Bank and their treasury departments. The IBWC meeting encountered difficulties over the strength of the language in the agreement.

“The Mexicans don’t want to be burdened by standards. They want guidelines, which means if you can meet them you do, and if you can’t, you don’t,” said a U.S. official.

He said that only “guidelines” prevail in Mexicali and Calexico, where untreated Mexican sewage pours into the New River and north to Calexico. The sewage is untreated because Mexican aeration ponds there do not work.

The United States also is asking Mexico to negotiate a new agreement with San Diego to have Tijuana’s sewage treated at the Point Loma plant until Mexico builds its own plant. A 20-year emergency agreement expires this year.

The United States wants Mexico to pay current prices for the treatment--”about four times what they are paying,” said a U.S. official.