U.S., Mexican Officials Sign Accord to Reduce Air, Sewage Pollution

In what they termed a “a historical moment in environmental relations” between Mexico and the United States, officials from the two countries on Thursday signed an agreement to end stubborn pollution problems along both sides of their 1,900-mile long border.

“We’re not just here to sign a few documents,” said Fitzhugh Green, associate administrator of the federal Environmental Protection Agency and the top-ranking U.S. official in the border environment negotiations. “We’re looking forward to many years of efficient protection and enhancement of the border we share with Mexico.”

The U.S. negotiating team “blessed the efforts of Mexico” to build two sewage treatment plants in Tijuana and solve a decades-old problem of sewage spillovers from Tijuana into San Diego County, Green said. The U.S. had originally proposed a binational plant in San Diego to deal with the sewage overflows.

“We have assured ourselves that the plan they have developed will take care of all the sewage problem on the Mexican side,” Green said.

The negotiators also signed an agreement to control transportation of hazardous materials across the Calexico-Mexicali border, develop a mutual response plan for hazardous spills and train customs officials in both countries in the matter.

The two countries also set a January, 1988, deadline for installation of emissions controls at three copper smelters in the so-called “Gray Triangle,” a smoggy border area near Douglas, Ariz.

Green called the signing of the agreement “a historical moment in environmental relations between our two countries,” and added that he looked forward to continued progress in attacking the environmental problems plaguing the border area.

The meeting at the Federal Building was the second this year for the environmental delegations. In 1983, Presidents Reagan and Miguel de la Madrid signed a border environmental pact in La Paz, Mexico, to discuss mutual pollution problems.

“In spite of the current economic crisis in our country, ecological problems hold great importance for the Mexican government,” said Alicia Barcena-Ibarra, undersecretary of the Department of Ecology and Urban Development, the Mexican counterpart of the EPA. “We are interested in improving the quality of life of the local populations.”

“I think we both have the same goals,” Barcena said.

That has not always been the case.

The agreement on sewage treatment caps decades of complaints from residents of San Diego County, where beaches and farmlands have been fouled by frequent breakages and overflows in Tijuana’s system, which caused raw sewage to cascade down hillsides into the Tijuana River basin inside the U.S. border.

And for decades in the Gray Triangle, sulfur dioxide from the Phelps Dodge copper smelter in Douglas--known to be the largest uncontrolled source of air pollution in the West--has blown south into Mexico at night. Sulfur dioxide is a potent respiratory irritant.

It is these kinds of problems that U.S. and Mexican negotiators have now pledged to solve.

Thursday’s agreement calls for two plants to be built in Tijuana, the first by December, 1986, and the second by 1989. Construction has already begun on the first plant, which will treat the sewage in a series of aeration ponds, then release it into ocean six miles south of Tijuana.

The Mexico delegation agreed to “take special measures” and request U.S. assistance if needed in case of a breakdown in the system. The agreement also stipulates that the planning and construction of the plants will be jointly monitored by U.S. and Mexican experts.

The treatment plant will be financed as part of a $46.4-million Inter-American Development bank loan to Mexico to expand Tijuana’s drinking water system. The loan agreement includes stipulations that Mexico build the sewage treatment plant within two years, U.S. officials said.

A second plant, proposed for construction at the juncture of the Alamar and Tijuana rivers, has drawn criticism from U.S. experts, who say the treated sewage would flow down the Tijuana River into San Diego County. Thursday’s agreement calls for periodic consultation between the two countries on the plans for this plant.

The Tijuana treatment plants would be the city’s first. Under an “emergency” agreement now 20 years old, the City of San Diego treats 13 million gallons of Tijuana sewage per day and dumps an additional 7 million gallons into the ocean south of Tijuana.

In the Gray Triangle, pollution from the three copper smelters has been called an environmental and health disaster and a threat to Arizona’s tourism industry. Scientists have linked smelter emissions there to biological damage from acid rain in the Rocky Mountains.

The 80-year-old firm Phelps Dodge copper smelter has been exempted from the U.S. Clean Air Act, and the EPA has been asked to extend the exemption through 1987. On Thursday, U.S. negotiators promised that Phelps Dodge would comply with clean air standards by January, 1988. The company has said it would be forced to close if ordered to install pollution controls.

For their part, Mexican negotiators agreed to halt expansion of a copper smelter in Cananea, Sonora, 60 miles southeast of Douglas, until the smelter installs emission controls. A smelter in Nacozari, directly south of Douglas, will be required to install such controls by January, 1988, negotiators said. The Nacozari smelter is set to open early next year.

Before Thursday’s agreement, the Mexican government, which owns a controlling interest in the two Sonora smelters, had balked at establishing pollution controls at its plants while Phelps Dodge was allowed to spew sulfur dioxide over the border.