Legislation Planned on Border Sewage as Talks Bog Down

With talks between Mexico and U.S. officials near an impasse, Assembly Speaker Willie Brown plans to introduce legislation in the next few days authorizing $33 million in state spending to deal with the border sewage crisis.

The bill, which will be co-authored by Assemblyman Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) and several other San Diego area legislators, will also call for a 1986 statewide election asking voters for a $150-million standby bond authorization to deal with border sewage and toxic problems.

Peace, the Democratic Assembly whip, persuaded Brown two weeks ago to delay introduction of his legislative package to see if binational meetings held last week in Mexico City might produce a solution to the languishing problem.

But Peace, who attended the Mexico City talks, said Wednesday that nothing that came out of them “falls into the category of a 100% solution.”

“We are really at where we thought we were at several months ago,” Peace said.

According to Peace, the major provisions of Brown’s bill would:

- Construct a series of lined and covered “catch basins” and a diversion system to move sewage now stored in open sumps, plus “renegade flows coming into gullies and valleys,” to the city treatment plant at Point Loma. The $5-million temporary system, which would take 12 to 18 months to construct, would be paid for with money already appropriated to deal with border sewage.

- Appropriate an additional $28 million for a three-mile pipeline and a pumping station on the U.S. side of the border to move the sewage into Mexico, where Mexican officials plan to use it in a reclamation project.

- Authorize the bond election asking voters to make available emergency funds that could be used, among other things, to construct a more-expensive sewage treatment plant on the border, should the problem persist.

The bond money could also be used, Peace said, for engineering studies on alternatives for cleaning up the New River in Imperial County, and for a state attorney general’s task force to identify U.S. firms doing business in Mexicali, which may be contributing to the infusion of toxic pollutants into the New River.

Currently, San Diego treats about 13 million gallons of Tijuana’s sewage daily and 7 million gallons of raw sewage flow into the Pacific Ocean south of Tijuana.

Mexico has proposed a two-pronged plan to build a sewage treatment plant west of Tijuana within a year and a second plant to the east within five years.

Peace said he came away from the Mexico City meetings convinced that Mexican officials sincerely want to deal with the problem and were being honest about their financial limitations.

But he said their proposal is a partial and inadequate solution to a major health and environmental crisis.

Peace added that Brown’s proposals would, if possible, use $5 million in federal money authorized for border sewage facilities design studies. He said, too, that the state would welcome federal reimbursements if more money were made available later.

But he said the sewage crisis is too serious to wait.

For Brown’s plan to work, however, the federal government must be involved, negotiating Mexico’s permission for the pipeline hookup to the U.S. pumping station, and guaranteeing operational and maintenance costs for the facilities, Peace said.

Peace said he, Brown and Sen. Wadie Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), the other principal co-author, had not discussed the specifics of the measures with Gov. George Deukmejian or his lieutenants. “But I fully expect their cooperation,” Peace said.

Meanwhile, U.S. and Mexican officials have postponed indefinitely a meeting that had been scheduled for next week in Tijuana because the two sides have not been able to draft an agreement for a Tijuan sewage treatment system.

Fitzhugh Green, associate administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, said Mexican officials also do not want to hold the meeting without EPA Administrator Lee Thomas. Green said that Thomas is very busy, but that he might be able to attend a meeting in March.

“Everything is in a state of flux,” said Green. “Neither side wants a meeting without an agreement, and they (the Mexicans) don’t want a meeting without Thomas . . . we hope it will be in March.”

The Mexicans plan to include their counterpart to Thomas, Marcelo Javelly Girard, minister of ecology and urban development.

In a related matter, the Inter-American Development Bank board began talks Wednesday on a $46.4-million loan for a Tijuana waterworks expansion that the United States has threatened to oppose if Mexico does not come up with an adequate sewage treatment plan.

The talks are expected to continue next week, but a vote could be postponed for another week.

U.S. officials are trying to tie the sewage treatment system to the loan agreement. They say the waterworks could double the 20 million gallons of sewage produced each day in Tijuana, which has no treatment system.

The United States wants assurances that the proposed Mexican system, which will be made up of aeration ponds, will be adequately built, maintained and expanded to meet growing demand. Sewage aeration ponds in Mexicali never have worked properly, U.S. officials say, and continue to dump raw effluent into the New River, which flows north into Calexico.

In the Tijuana plan, U.S. officials oppose the proposed eastern sewage plant, which would be built at the confluence of the Alamar and Tijuana rivers. They want assurances from the Mexicans that no treated or untreated sewage would be released into the Tijuana River.

Green declined to detail the latest snags in negotiations. “The points of disagreement vary from day to day . . . it’s like the ozone level--it gets thinner and fatter,” he said.

In addition to the bank loan agreement, U.S. officials want two other written sewage agreements--one under the 1983 La Paz presidential accord on border environmental issues and another under the International Boundary and Water Commission, which handles the nuts-and-bolts work in border water and sewage problems.

The Tijuana meeting, originally scheduled for Monday and Tuesday, would have been the annual meeting on border environmental issues established by the La Paz accord.

Under that agreement, signed by President Reagan and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid in La Paz, Mexico, binational work groups meet during the year to discuss soil, air and water pollution problems and work out accords; national coordinators and work groups meet once a year.