Mexico’s Sewer Pledge: Another Pipe Dream?

Last month, senior Mexican officials, including President Miguel de la Madrid, gathered on a scenic hillside overlooking the Pacific to inaugurate this border city’s long-awaited sewage treatment plant. Throughout the well-publicized ceremony, Mexican authorities exhibited a kind of confidence, a technological can-do attitude, more frequently associated with their U.S. counterparts.

Asked at one point whether he could guarantee that San Diego beaches would never be closed again because of Mexican sewage, Manuel Camacho Solis, Mexico’s secretary of urban development and ecology, replied boldly:

“I can make that promise, yes.”

Today, however, five miles to the north, a solitary sign on the white-sand Pacific beach at Border Field State Park attests to a different reality.

“Contaminated With Sewage,” the sign reads. “Avoid All Contact.”

In fact, more than a mile of San Diego County shoreline just north of the border remains under a county health quarantine because of the sewage problem.

Meanwhile, millions of gallons of untreated sewage from Tijuana continue to flow into San Diego County daily via the polluted Tijuana River and various border canyons. Pending the actual start of operations at Tijuana’s new plant, untreated sewage is still being discharged into the surf south of the border, awaiting only the right currents to contaminate more of the San Diego County shoreline.

The difference in the future promise and the current reality tells much about the exasperating, decades-old problem of Tijuana sewage polluting U.S. beaches, farmland and marine habitats. It is perhaps the most longstanding and vexing of the many border environmental problems that have emerged as major concerns in U.S.-Mexican relations.

U.S. officials were quick to praise the opening of Mexico’s new $20-million system, which theoretically should bring this fast-growing city of more than 1 million up to the 20th-Century treatment standards of the developed world. However, the praise was tempered by a recognition that the problem is far from solved.

To handle Tijuana’s burgeoning population, Mexico’s plans call for a doubling of the new plant’s capacity within several years and the construction of another plant at a yet-undesignated site. How this is going to be accomplished at a time of severe economic crisis in Mexico--a crisis that shows no signs of abating soon--remains a question.

“It’s only fair to characterize this (new sewage plant) as a part of the solution,” said A. James Barnes, deputy administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

County Supervisor Brian Bilbray, who as mayor of Imperial Beach once mounted a bulldozer to dam up the Tijuana sewage flowing into his city, said: “This is a giant leap forward, but it’s a journey that is ongoing, and we’ve got to recognize that.”

Other officials on the U.S. side have reacted with considerable skepticism, questioning Mexico’s ability to maintain and operate the new system--and then expand it substantially--during a period of fiscal austerity. Though the current system includes a new treatment plant, pipeline and pumping station, Tijuana’s anarchic growth has meant that many residences and industries remain unserviced by the system.

Because of such concerns, U.S. experts still support the construction of a completely new treatment system north of the border--estimates of its cost top $700 million--that would collect Mexican and U.S. sewage, treat it and discharge it well out to sea. However, the chances of coming up with funding for such a project appear slim.

“Flows in Mexico are going to increase, and it’s our position that the solution is on our side of the border,” said Michael McCann, senior engineer with the San Diego office of the Regional Water Quality Control Board, a state agency that monitors water issues. “I don’t think they (the Mexicans) have the right situation for a total solution on their side.”

Apart from the costs involved, many officials on the U.S. side doubt the ability of Mexico to adequately maintain and operate sewage-treatment plants in Tijuana. They point to repeated breakdowns of previous systems.

“That’s their big downfall--maintenance,” said Rod Donnelly, intergovernmental liaison with the San Diego Water Utilities Department. “I see the same happening with this new plant. It’ll run nifty for a while but not for long.”

But amid the celebratory, and self-congratulatory, mood at the Tijuana ceremony inaugurating the new treatment facility, such pessimism was rejected out of hand.

“We were able to do it (build the new system) at half the price you would do it in the United States,” Camacho Solis, the ecology secretary, pointedly told U.S. reporters, dismissing doubts about Mexican technology and maintenance. “This project has been approved by international advisers and by advisers from the United States.”

As for Tijuana’s growth, Mexican officials noted their intention to expand the city’s sewage-treatment capabilities, but they gave no specific sites or target dates for completion. The just-completed plant, about four miles south of the border, is designed to treat 17 million to 23 million gallons of sewage daily, roughly equal to Tijuana’s total current sewage flow.

However, that flow is expanding rapidly as Tijuana’s population continues to grow.

“There’s no doubt that we’ll need more capacity,” said Javier Valdez Vega, director of infrastructure projects for the Mexican environmental ministry. “The question is when? And how much will it cost? And where are we going to build it?”

Although such key questions remain unanswered, unnerving U.S. observers, Camacho Solis was confidently predicting a final solution.

“In two years,” Camacho Solis said, “we will have solved 100% of the problem of Tijuana sewage.”

The history of the Tijuana sewage problem, which dates back to the 1930s, is marked by much-ballyhooed solutions that went awry.

Not taking any chances, officials in the United States are proceeding with plans to build several so-called “defensive” systems to capture stray Mexican sewage that flows downhill into the county, polluting farmland and the National Estuarine Sanctuary at the mouth of the foul Tijuana River on the U.S. side. The systems will carry the stray, or “renegade,” flows--caused by malfunctioning Mexican equipment or lack of sewage lines--back to the Tijuana system.

The renegade sewage flow reflects a reality common to the Third World--thousands of Tijuana residences are still not connected to the central sewerage lines.

As recently as 1982, in fact, half of Tijuana’s population lacked sewage service. Mexican officials say 90% of Tijuana’s population will have access to such service soon, but many on the U.S. side say they’ll believe it when they see it.

Moreover, chronic breakdowns have plagued the Mexican system, allowing sewage to flow unchecked almost continuously into the United States.

“We continue to apply Band-Aid solutions to this problem,” said Donnelly of the San Diego Water Utilities Department. “We have graduated from very inexpensive Band-Aids to multimillion-dollar Band-Aids, but we have not come up with a solution.”

Asked what he sees in the future, Donnelly gave a one-word reply: “Trouble.”

But others are more sanguine.

“I’m very encouraged by what the Mexicans are doing,” said Gary Stephany, director of environmental health services for San Diego County. “I just hope they continue.”