U.S., Mexico Reported Set to Sign New Pact to Cut Border Pollution

A unique agreement on water, air and soil pollution affecting U.S.-Mexican border areas will be signed Thursday by representatives of both countries, U.S. officials said.

Although the officials refused to comment on the contents of the agreement, they said it would increase cooperation between the two countries in solving controversial border pollution problems.

Foremost among those problems is the decades-old intermittent pollution of south San Diego County farmlands and beaches caused by overflows from the Tijuana sewage system, said Fitzhugh Green, an associate administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency. Technical teams from both countries were to meet today to hammer out the details of the agreement, Green said.

Negotiations on border pollution issues have shown “solid progress” since 1983, Green said, when President Reagan and Mexican President Miguel de la Madrid signed an agreement in La Paz, Mexico, to cooperate on pollution problems along the 1,933-mile long boundary.

Earlier this year, the Mexican government announced plans to build two sewage treatment plants in Tijuana over a five-year period. U.S. and Mexican officials earlier had discussed a binational plant along the border to prevent future pollution from Tijuana sewage runoff.

“We’re not putting any spin on our accomplishments,” Green said, “but they show a lot of good faith on the part of the Mexicans--that they’re willing to sign assurances to build, operate and maintain” sewage treatment plants in Tijuana.

“We hope we’ll have some positive things to announce on Thursday,” Green said. “It looks good right now.”

Alicia Barcena Ibarra, undersecretary of the Department of Ecology and Urban Development, the Mexican counterpart of the EPA, will represent the Mexican delegation on Thursday.

Green said discussions would also touch on pollution problems from human and industrial waste is dumped into the New River in Mexicali. The untreated sewage flows north across the border into Calexico and the Imperial Valley.

A third major point of negotiations concerns the “gray triangle,” a smoggy area on the Arizona-Mexico border where three copper smelters, one of them in Douglas, Ariz., operate within 50 miles of one another. Smoke from the Phelps Dodge smelter in Douglas blows south into Agua Prieta, Sonora, at night.

Smoke from sulfur dioxide pollution in the “gray triangle” has caused respiratory problems for Mexican residents and eventually could create a health hazard on the U.S. side of the border.

“We’re going to take up a lot of other issues as well,” Green said. “It’s a long border from Texas to California.”

To solve the Tijuana sewage problem, U.S. officials last year proposed construction of a binational sewage treatment plant and Congress authorized $32 million for the project. Those plans changed when Mexico announced it intended to build a treatment plant south of Tijuana in La Joya. U.S. legislators have since proposed spending the allotment on a defensive pipeline system and a treatment plant on the U.S. side of the border in the event of a breakdown at the Mexican plants.

U.S. officials have expressed concern about Mexican plans for a second treatment plant east of Tijuana on the Tijuana River. A serious malfunction in the plant would result in untreated sewage flowing into the U.S., officials have said.

Under an “emergency” agreement now 20 years old, the City of San Diego treats 13 million gallons of raw sewage from Tijuana daily and has absorbed the lion’s share of treatment costs. An additional 7 million gallons of Tijuana sewage is dumped into the ocean south of Tijuana every day. The agreement expires this year and San Diego now needs to use its treatment plant capacity for sewage on this side of the border.

Frequent breaks in Tijuana sewage pipelines have caused millions of gallons of raw sewage to spill into 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, south of Coronado.