Senate Votes to Put Bond Issue on Ballot : State May Aid Mexican Sewage Cleanup

The Senate Thursday voted, 33-0, to place a $150-million bond issue on the November ballot to finance efforts to clean up sewage, industrial wastes and toxic chemicals that cascade into San Diego and Imperial counties from Mexico.

The measure by Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) must now go back to the Assembly, where concurrence in minor technical changes is expected to be routine. Then, it will go to the governor’s desk, where its fate is uncertain.

Sen. Wadie P. Deddeh (D-Chula Vista), who carried Brown’s bill on the Senate floor Thursday, said he would be “very surprised” if Gov. George Deukmejian vetoes the measure.

But Deukmejian has repeatedly said that the U.S. and Mexican governments--not California--should be taking the lead in the border cleanup effort. And officials of his Department of Finance, which opposes the bill, say it may be a deterrent to U.S. and Mexico if California begins dealing with border pollution problems to the degree suggested by Brown’s bill.

Twice, Deukmejian has vetoed appropriations for monitoring and cleaning up the contamination of the New River by Mexicali industries.

Deukmejian, who has enjoyed large election margins from San Diego County in the past, is far ahead of Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, his Democratic rival, in polls. But backers of the bond measure, including Republican legislators from San Diego, are hoping that election-year pressures and Bradley’s repeated criticism of Deukmejian’s record regarding toxic cleanup will persuade the governor to sign the bill.

Despite his comments, the governor has never given a direct indication of what he will do when Brown’s bill reaches his desk.

“The bill is going to the Assembly. They’ll concur in it next week and then it will be on his desk,” Deddeh said. “We’ll just see.”

He said the “infectious agents responsible for cholera, hepatitis, typhoid fever and many, many other diseases” are in the millions of gallons of sewage and other pollutants that flow across the border daily.

He added that Brown’s bill “represents the first real commitment to solving the serious contamination problems on our international border.”

“We simply must take steps to solve the problem,” Brown said. “While not willing to shoulder the entire burden of capital and ongoing costs, we must now build what must be built.”

Upon approval by voters, Brown’s bill would create the International Border Wastewater and Toxics Cleanup Bond Fund in the office of state Treasurer Jesse Unruh.

Under the bill, the bond revenue can be spent on studies, surveys, design work and construction of facilities “for mitigating, reducing or reversing contamination flows across the U.S.-Mexican border.”

The measure includes a $2-million appropriation for start-up costs and for study and immediate steps to clean up the New River.