Border Sewage Plant, Finally at Hand, Must Proceed Apace

More than half a century after Mexican sewage began to seep across the border, the first real chance for long-term relief from what has become a torrent of effluent is finally at hand.

The United States and Mexico have signed a historic pact calling for construction of a $200-million border sewage treatment plant. The facility will process the 10 million to 12 million gallons of raw sewage that each day pours into the United States via the Tijuana River, cascading down canyons from Tijuana’s poorer neighborhoods.

The sewage has resulted in the quarantine of a 2 1/2-mile stretch of beach just north of the border since the early 1980s. It also fouls a sensitive wetland bird sanctuary and border-area horse farms. It has prompted decades of angry rhetoric and frustration, symbolized by then-Imperial Beach Mayor Brian Bilbray’s 1980 bulldozer ride against the rising tide of sewage.

Now just two major obstacles stand in the way of the plant’s opening in 1994 or 1995: funding and the outfall pipe’s potential harm to the environment. We hope that neither will block this most crucial of public works projects.

An environmental impact review is under way to determine whether the huge pipe that will dump treated sewage at sea will cause harm. The conduit will enter the surf at a site not far from two federally protected ecosystems.

Assuming that the pipe and the plant do not damage the environment, Congress, the state and the city must pay for most of the various components of the treatment plant and the pipelines.

To date, only about $32 million of that money is earmarked. The Mexican share is expected to be about $41 million, money that will be put up front by a U.S. loan program.

The funding must be swiftly and consistently approved, and construction should proceed apace. Our two governments are too close to solving one of our region’s most enduring problems to allow any delay.