Reclaiming Water Above, Below Border

If there is one thing about the water issue that everybody in this semiarid area agrees on, it is that there isn’t enough to go around. Be it in the United States or Mexico, public and private entities are always trying to procure more, better or cheaper water.

San Diego gets 90% of its water from far away, and Tijuana about the same. Both communities spend many a resource getting this water to their cities, and both go through tremendous efforts and cost to dispose of it--up to 215 million gallons a day--once it has been used. Given the increasing demand for water to keep up with growth and the problems San Diego and Tijuana have had with sewage, both border communities figure to spend enormous amounts in coming years finding constructive ways to obtain and dispose of water.

In 20 years, Tijuana and San Diego may well become the nucleus of an international megalopolis, extending 200 miles from Los Angeles to Ensenada, with a total population of about 30 million, of which 5 million to 8 million will live next to the border.

The time to define the character of this binational community is right now. How to offer the necessary public services like mass transit, water, sewerage and housing, and at the same time preserve healthy living conditions for the residents, is a challenge to our foresight and innovation.

The proper management of water could be one of the keys to this puzzle. Waste water will be a valuable resource once we get rid of the idea that waste water means “water to be wasted.” A simple fact can prove how wrong this concept is: 99.7% of waste water is pure water.

The city of San Diego has begun to recognize this with its plans for water reclamation. Tijuana needs to do the same.

As Tijuana celebrates its 100th anniversary, it is a city that that is growing economically: private businesses have boomed, and domestic and foreign capital has arrived at a greater pace than ever before.

Yet, in the past decade, Tijuana’s environmental quality has deteriorated steadily. The city is accumulating more solid waste and experiencing more wastewater spills. There is an uncontrolled influx of toxic substances and an increasingly polluted atmosphere.

In addition, because of the limited water supply, there are virtually no parks and urban greenery. And canyons are eroding at a rapid rate because of a lack of vegetation. This is understandable in a city where water is so scarce that many homes still do not have running water and must depend on bottled water.

As long as this community continues to be “progress-and-development- minded,” the problem will only get worse. Water will go to housing, commerce or the maquiladoras, not the environment.

In both cities, enhancing the urban environment is erroneously seen as a “good deed,” rather than as a way of ensuring long-term, sustainable growth. For the region’s sake, we must change thinking on wastewater management.

Instead of using sewage systems to dispose of water away from the population nucleus, the pipes should be carrying the water to local reclamation plants near where water is needed. There would be abundant water for irrigation if millions of gallons of waste water were being reclaimed rather than being dumped into the ocean each day.

Most of the infrastructure for such a system is already in place. What needs modification is our philosophy.

Right now, both Tijuana and San Diego rely on centralized treatment facilities. For water reclamation, a decentralized system is more appropriate. It would be more efficient and extend the capacity of present pipes. For instance, in Tijuana, it would help avoid spills by reclaiming the waste near where it is generated rather than depending on overburdened pipes to transport it to central plants.

El Colegio de la Frontera Norte (COLEF), has been working on such a system with support from the state government of Baja California. The effort is binational and has been heavily supported by the Environmental Defense Fund and local organizations.

The main purpose of COLEF’s study is to offer a way to manage waste water in an environmentally sensible fashion. COLEF proposes using small modular components that can treat water passively, without sophisticated or costly instrumentation.

By adopting this system of wastewater management, Tijuana could resolve a number of its environmental calamities. The reclaimed water could be used to create urban greenery and parks. Open space and hillsides could be preserved through reforestation, reducing soil erosion. Air quality would improve, and there would be fewer sewage spills.

The eastern part of Tijuana, where growth is the greatest and most of the wastewater spills occur, could be the perfect area for adopting this system.

Instead, both countries’ plans for dealing with the border sewage crisis call for centralized plants. Mexico has proposed a plant alongside Tijuana’s Alamar River. The U. S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission’s idea is for a binational plant built in the United States.

The binational treatment plant is a promising way of uniting the two countries on their sewage perspective. Solving the political differences can only be regarded as a step in the right direction. But the long-term solution to managing waste water in this region must include a reclamation component, which the decentralized system offers. Phasing in such a system could be the appropriate way of moving into the 21st Century and leaving sewage problems behind.