Budget Includes Waste Treatment Plant

President Bush’s fiscal 1991 budget contains a $15.7-million request for a border waste-water treatment plant and a connecting pipeline network envisioned as the solution to the pollution of San Diego’s border region by Mexican sewage.

The request follows the October signing of a landmark accord between the United States and Mexico that commits both nations to building a $192-million, San Diego-based sewage plant that would treat waste from Tijuana, beginning in late 1994. A more formal diplomatic document remains to be signed.

Under Bush’s request, the money would become available only if Mexico agreed to finance all operating and maintenance costs of treating Tijuana waste water at the plant and all costs for treatment capacity beyond 25-million gallons daily.

Ten to 12-million gallons of raw sewage flow north across the border each day via the Tijuana River and many gullies and arroyos, fouling a national estuarine sanctuary and a stretch of beach just north of the border. Some believe that the problem has existed for half a century.

Under current conceptual plans, the plant, envisioned as a 25-million gallon per day facility that could be expanded to handle as much as 100-million gallons daily, would be linked to collector systems that would route the sewage into the facility for treatment. The treated waste would be deposited into the ocean via an outfall that could extend up to 16,000 feet.

The international plant is tentatively planned for an area of the border off Dairy Mart Road, next to the city of San Diego’s planned secondary sewage-treatment plant and water-reclamation facility. City, state, federal and Mexican money would be used in the project.

A spokeswoman for Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego) said the 1991 appropriation could be used for pipeline connecting the collector network to the plant and design or construction of the plant itself. Since 1984, Congress has appropriated $32 million toward design and construction of the system.