More Sewage Spills Possible Along the Border, Officials Say

Delays in revamping Tijuana’s faltering sewer system could result in more across-the-border sewage spills this summer, federal and local officials have warned, and the problem could be aggravated by the closing of an emergency sewage-holding pond on the U.S. side of the border. Bob Hudson, an aide to Supervisor Brian Bilbray, expressed fears that beaches stretching north from the border would be contaminated by sewage this summer. Hudson said that all officials could do was “cross our fingers and hope we don’t have any breaks in the pipelines in Mexico. Despite everything that’s been done, we can expect a repeat of past contamination problems.”

U.S. concerns, however, apparently aren’t shared by Mexican officials who Friday said there were no obstacles to resolving Tijuana sewage problems. Mexican federal officials Friday also awarded contracts for construction of the first sewage treatment plant to be built in Tijuana, and Mexican officials vowed it would be ready by December, 1986.

Guillermo Carillo Arenas, Mexico’s secretary of ecology and urban development, expressed confidence that Tijuana sewage problems will be eased considerably before then and that in 1986 the problem “will be resolved forever.”

But some San Diego and federal officials were not convinced.

They cited a delay in the start up of a new sewage pumping station for Tijuana that was designed to help prevent spills .

And they pointed out that Mexican officials have already pushed back the completion date for the new treatment plant by eight months. Officials had previously promised it would be completed by March, 1986, not December, said Scott Harvey, San Diego’s intergovernmental affairs director.

“Mexico is falling further and further behind on its commitment to build a sewage conveyance system and to make it operational,” Harvey said. The delays make it imperative that San Diego forge ahead with a “defensive” sewage system, he added.

Today and Tuesday, Harvey, other city officials and the entire San Diego congressional delegation will ask a House subcommittee in Washington to approve money to build four covered, concrete drains, or sumps, and a pipeline running parallel to the border. This “defensive” system would catch the raw sewage when it pours across the border and send it back to Tijuana. The subcommittee will be asked to take $32 million that had been designated in fiscal 1985 for a proposed jointly-operated U.S.-Mexican sewage treatment plant and now spend it for the defensive system.

Plans for a two-nation treatment plant, which had been pushed by officials north of the border, were shelved when Mexico announced it would build a sewage plant in Tijuana without U.S. help.

The sewage problem has long blighted the area along the U.S. side of the border. Tijuana is on a mesa above low-lying areas on the U.S. side of the border. Frequent breaks in Tijuana’s antiquated sewer mains have sent raw sewage spilling across the border, contaminating farmland; fouling the Tijuana river, which flows into the ocean on the U.S. side of the border, and at times closing beaches from the border to as far north as the Silver Strand.

Twenty million gallons a day of sewage flows into Tijuana pipelines. Thirteen million gallons of that is pumped north to the Point Loma treatment plant under a long-standing emergency agreement with the city of San Diego. The other 7 million gallons is dumped untreated into the ocean south of Tijuana.

An estimated 20-million additional gallons of sewage--from homes not linked to Tijuana sewer lines--flows into storm drains and the Tijuana River.

Mexico rejected the plans for a binational treatment plant, despite strong lobbying lobbying by U.S. officials during February talks in Mexico City, and opted to build its own plant. At those meetings, Mexican officials also promised to begin operating the new border pumping station, designed to help control spills, by mid-May. But federal and local officials said Friday that there are delays in putting the pump in operation. The pumping station won’t be tested until June and no date has been set for it to begin operation, they said.

U.S. officials also pointed to ominous signs that there may be more delays in completion of the Mexican sewage treatment plant, to be located in La Joya, four miles south of Tijuana.

The first part of the plant, slated to open in 1986, is designed to process 17 million gallons of sewage a day. The second stage of the plant, to be finished in 1989, would handle 34 million gallons daily.

Richard Reavis, border coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, said delays were likely because he had learned from Mexican engineers that “they have not initiated designs yet” for the plant.

San Diego officials said they were surprised to learn about the possibility of a delay. They said they had seen artists drawings of the proposed plant months ago and had assumed that technical renderings were finished.

In the Friday statement, Mexican officials made no mention of delays. They noted that the pumping station would begin “its first phase” of operations in June.

Ironically, in expectation that the pumping station would be working soon, officials from the International Boundary and Water Commission recently ordered an emergency holding pond for border sewage closed and bulldozed.

That move infuriated Bilbray and his staff who argued that it was premature. “We’ve closed the barn door while the horse was still out,” Bilbray aide Hudson said.

“It doesn’t cost anything to let it (the holding pond) stay there,” but it would probably cost $50,000 to rebuild it, Hudson noted. Last week, as the pond was being eliminated, about a million gallons of raw sewage spilled down a nearby gully from Tijuana.

Harvey said elimination of the pond and continued spills meant “we’ll have further quarantines of Imperial Beach.”

If San Diego officials persuade the House subcommittee to reappropriate the $32 million, Harvey said he is hopeful at least two of the concrete drains could be built this summer. Five-million dollars in state funds would be contributed to the project.

The city initially wants to build four drains in the border canyons which receive the largest sewage runoff--in Smuggler’s Gulch, Goat’s Canyon, Canyon del Sol and Stewart’s Drain.

Harvey noted that the International Boundary and Water Commission has already proposed building two of the drains, in Canyon del Sol and Stewarts Drian. That project has been held up, however, because the commission has had trouble acquiring permission from property owners to use the land.