Mexico Sewage Plant Plans Raise Doubts

An Environmental Protection Agency official has doubts that a sewage plant Mexico plans to build, with funds approved Wednesday by The Inter-American Development Bank, will solve the problem of sewage spills across the border.

The $46.4-million loan to Mexico approved by the bank includes an agreement by Mexico to build a treatment system in Tijuana, which has no sewage treatment facilities.

The U.S. government and local officials in San Diego County have pushed for a solution to the periodic pollution of farmland and beaches near the border by millions of gallons of sewage from Tijuana.

Tijuana generates almost 20 million gallons of sewage daily. For years, San Diego has treated about 13 million gallons of Tijuana sewage a day under an emergency agreement. The sewage is piped to the city’s treatment plant on Point Loma. The remaining untreated sewage is dumped into the ocean a few miles south of Tijuana.

However, frequent pipeline breaks in Tijuana have resulted in sewage spilling into the low-lying areas of the Tijuana River Valley on the U.S. side of the border, where it pollutes farmland and has contaminated beaches as far north as the Silver Strand State Beach between Imperial Beach and Coronado.

Mexican plans for sewage treatment may not solve the problem of sewage spills from pipeline breaks, according to Richard Reavis, an EPA border coordinator who works out of the agency’s San Francisco office.

“I don’t really see anything so far (in the agreement reached Wednesday) that insures that will not happen,” he said.

“It would have been desirable if more definite assurances or something could have been worked out with Mexico that would indeed insure against breaks in the Mexican system and preclude the flows of sewage across the Mexican border,” Reavis added.

When the Tijuana sewage system breaks down, sewage flows into the United States can now exceed 2 million gallons a day, Reavis said--and he fears flows as heavy as 20 million gallons a day in the future.

The United States and Mexico delayed a vote on the loan for five weeks while they negotiated over the sewage issue. Mexico had sought the loan for a waterworks project for Tijuana. The United States had protested that the water project would result in twice as much Tijuana sewage, and officials had threatened to vote against approval of the loan by the international bank.

The United States could not veto the loan, but Mexico wanted to avoid a “no” vote and the two nations worked out an accord that linked the loan to the construction of sewage treatment facilities in Tijuana.

Sen. Pete Wilson (R-Calif.) called the accord and loan “a giant step toward decreasing, and perhaps eliminating, a longstanding threat to the environment and public health” of Californians.

The loan agreement includes stipulations that Mexico will build, operate and maintain a sewage treatment plant in western Tijuana within two years.

“The Mexicans have offered a number of assurances in their project that we feel are important to it being carried out effectively,” said George High, director of the Mexican Affairs Department for the State Department. “For that reason we voted for it. We’re very appreciative of the steps they’ve taken.”