Plan Revived for Joint Treatment of Tijuana Sewage

Likening the vexing problem of Tijuana sewage to the recent record oil spill in Alaska, Sen. Alan Cranston and other federal and area officials called Tuesday for the construction of a $192-million facility designed to treat Mexican waste along the border in San Diego.

The proposed “Big Pipe” project--so designated because it would include a pipe, or outfall, that would transport treated effluent several miles out to sea and discharge it there--is the most ambitious proposal to date designed to deal with the vast volume of Tijuana sewage that daily fouls San Diego land, water and beaches.

The long-dormant proposal’s recent revival reflects a growing consensus among U. S. experts that a joint U. S.-Mexico plant is the only viable solution to the problem.

Irritant in Relations

The longstanding sanitation woes--born of fast-growing Tijuana’s inability to handle its waste flows--is one of the most severe environmental problems along the entire 1,952-mile U. S.-Mexico border and has been an irritant in relations between the two nations.

“We must take action to stop this pollution of our environment, which threatens the health of the residents of San Diego,” said Cranston, a California Democrat, who spoke along with other officials during a news conference Tuesday near the bank of the sewage-clogged Tijuana River, just north of the border.

The fetid river flows from Tijuana into San Diego before draining into marshes and the Pacific, carrying up to 10 million gallons of waste daily into the United States, mostly from Tijuana homes and businesses not connected to sewer lines. Much of the Mexican sewage that doesn’t reach the ocean ends up, on the U. S. side, in the Tijuana River National Estuarine Sanctuary and the Tijuana Slough National Wildlife Refuge, two federally protected ecosystems frequented by abundant wildlife, including threatened bird species such as the brown pelican.

Cranston compared the scope of the sanitation problem to the recent oil tanker rupture near Valdez, Alaska--the largest spill in U. S. history.

“This is less dramatic because it goes on all the time,” Cranston said, “but it’s just as much of a health problem.”

San Diego Mayor Maureen O’Connor added, “We’re talking about raw sewage here, and I don’t think it’s something we can ignore, because it’s a health hazard.”

Beaches Quarantined

In the past decade, sewage from Tijuana has occasionally caused the quarantining of beaches in southern San Diego County. The first 2 1/2 miles of beach north of the boundary line, situated in Border Field State Park, have been quarantined since March, 1983.

Joining Cranston in backing the joint project were O’Connor, who had already expressed support for the plan, and Narendra N. Gunaji, who heads the U. S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission.

Notably absent were Mexican officials, who are still mulling over the costly plan.

The El Paso, Tex.-based boundary commission is made up of U. S. and Mexican members who are entrusted with deciding a range of border issues. The U. S. section proposed the new facility to its Mexican counterpart in September. U. S. authorities are awaiting word from Mexican officials, whose approval and funds are required.

Gunaji predicted that the plant could be operational by 1993, but that estimate presupposes Mexican approval and sufficient funding from both governments--two significant hurdles.

Whether the plan will ever become a reality, or remain a pipe dream, depends largely on the willingness of the two nations to commit the huge sums at a time when fiscal austerity is in vogue both in Washington and Mexico City.

25 Million Gallons a Day

Current estimates place a price tag of $192 million on the proposed treatment facility, which would be capable of treating about 25 million gallons of sewage a day. Its prospective design allows for expansion to cover Tijuana’s growth. Tijuana’s existing treatment system is unreliable and overtaxed, according to U. S. officials.

Of the total cost of the proposed new facility, the U. S. government would contribute the lion’s share, about $100 million; Mexican authorities would pitch in $41 million. In addition, the state of California is projected to contribute $15 million and the city of San Diego, should it choose to participate, would chip in $36 million.

The plan could also assist San Diego in its effort to treat its own sewage. If the proposed facility is built, Deputy City Manager Roger Frauenfelder said, San Diego authorities will consider constructing an adjoining plant to handle city wastes, likely tying into the same ocean outfall.

San Diego is under federal pressure to improve its sewage treatment. The government has charged that San Diego has failed to meet federal clean-water treatment requirements.

Of the almost $192-million cost, officials said, $32 million in federal money is already available. That sum was originally intended to construct a system that would send “renegade” Mexican sewage flows from San Diego back to Tijuana. But authorities now acknowledge that it could prove self-defeating to return sewage to an overburdened system that is frequently subject to breakdown.

A Key Question

Although O’Connor and other San Diego officials have insisted that the sewage is a federal problem, a key question is whether congressmen representing other parts of the United States will be willing to pick up the tab for treatment of sewage from another nation. But Cranston expressed optimism.

“This plainly is a federal responsibility,” he said.

A wide range of authorities--including officials from the Environmental Protection Agency, San Diego County and the area congressional delegation--have voiced approval of the plan to build a plant in San Diego. Willingness to provide funds is something else, however.

The Big Pipe concept, which has been kicking around for many years, has been revived lately in part because of fears on the U. S. side that Mexico may go ahead with plans to construct a long-planned treatment facility in Tijuana along the Rio Alamar, a tributary of the Tijuana River. The facility would serve Tijuana’s fast-growing eastern suburbs, where fewer than half the residents are now hooked up to sewer lines.

In the United States, officials fear that sewage treated at that facility--which would ultimately discharge into the Tijuana River--would not meet U. S. guidelines, thus sealing the polluted fate of the Tijuana River for many years to come.

Although the proposed facility in San Diego would be unique, a somewhat similar joint treatment project has been in operation for some time between the cities of Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Mexico. Authorities said that facility has been a success.