Stalled Plan to Treat Tijuana Sewage Advances : Environment: $1 million in congressional funds will be used to divert flow to a Point Loma plant.

U.S. and Mexican negotiators have reached an accord and secured funding that will allow the completion by late July of a long-delayed project to collect Tijuana sewage flows and ship the wastes to a San Diego treatment plant, authorities said Friday.

Narendra N. Gunaji, who heads the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency composed of representatives from the United States and Mexico, said that some $1 million in congressional money had been approved this week, allowing the much-anticipated project to advance.

“We’re going to finish it,” Gunaji vowed before a group in San Diego, adding that the project should be operational by late July.

Gunaji made a similar public pledge to San Diego officials last October, stating that the system would be in operation by January. He acknowledged Friday that his earlier comments had been unduly optimistic.

“I made an error,” Gunaji said of his earlier predictions, blaming the delays on congressional tie-ups in securing the funding.

Authorities say some 13-million gallons of raw sewage from Mexico enter San Diego daily via the Tijuana River, which during dry weather is largely composed of wastes from Tijuana neighborhoods where treatment lines are limited. The reeking sewage has spawned a fertile breeding ground for mosquitoes and other pests in San Diego’s Tijuana River Valley, officials say, prompting Gov. Pete Wilson in March to declare a state of emergency in the area.

The international waste dilemma, evident in the Tijuana-San Diego area for more than 50 years, is among the most intractable of the many border pollution problems. The pollution issue has threatened a proposed free-trade pact between Mexico and the United States, as critics have voiced fears that additional border commerce will lead to more pollution.

Authorities say the Tijuana River flows are mostly composed of residential wastes from Mexico, not the heavy metals and other hazardous substances associated with industry. However, residents of San Diego’s Tijuana River Valley--the area most affected by the wastes--have expressed fears that the pollution may be more dangerous than anyone knows and might have unknown long-term health implications. Area residents said Friday that they were gratified that authorities had finally committed themselves to a formal timetable for completing the waste-diversion project. But they expressed regrets that the matter had not been resolved in time for the summer mosquito-breeding season.

“I’m happy that it’s proceeding, but it’s not going to be fast enough,” said Richard Davis, a geologist who has been a consultant for a citizen’s group pressuring for a solution.

Said Brian Bilbray, a San Diego County supervisor who represents the region, “It would have been better if it had been sooner.”

Under the plan, Tijuana River waters will be diverted from a point just south of the border and piped into the San Diego sewage system via a series of special hookups. The sewage--up to 13 million gallons a day--will be shipped for treatment to San Diego’s Point Loma facility. The San Diego City Council agreed to accept the Mexican flows last month.

Mexican crews are expected to begin work on the needed connections within the next two weeks, said Jose Valdez, principal engineer for the boundary and water commission.

Still unresolved is the matter of who is going to pick up the tab--estimated at some $3.2 million a year--for treating the Mexican sewage. State authorities have pledged some $900,000 to help offset partial first-year costs, but city officials are seeking federal monies, an uncertain source, to cover the subsequent expenses.

“We think it’s a federal responsibility,” said Roger Frauenfelder, deputy city manager.

The hookup between San Diego and Tijuana is only considered an interim solution to the decades-old problem of Mexican sewage in San Diego. The project is expected to be in operation only until 1995, the targeted completion date for a projected $195-million international treatment plant in southern San Diego.

The planned facility, which is designed to treat some 25 million gallons daily of Mexican sewage, will replace the interim hookup and is viewed as a more long-term means of dealing with the problem. The plant will include an outfall that will discharge treated effluent some 3 miles offshore into the Pacific. The International Boundary and Water Commission recently awarded a $19.2-million contract to an Arizona firm to begin preliminary construction of a 2.3-mile-long land pipeline to the used as part of the facility, officials said.

However, environmentalists and others have expressed reservations about the large sewage project, particularly since it envisions a pipeline through a sensitive riparian habitat that is home to a number of endangered birds and the site of two federally protected wetlands habitats. In addition, critics, citing drought conditions, have also asserted that the treated waste effluent should be recycled rather than dumped at sea.

In coming years, those issues associated with the larger plant are expected to be debated with increasing intensity in the San Diego-Tijuana area.

Meanwhile, on another front, local health authorities are expected to begin clearing clogged passages in the Tijuana River Valley within the next few weeks, destroying mosquito breeding grounds and allowing for improved application of insecticides. Area environmentalists have expressed concerns about possible damage to sensitive habitats.

“The mosquito problem will be handled,” said Assemblyman Steve Peace, who attended the session with the International Boundary Commission and referred derisively to critics as “elitist, La Jolla-based environmentalists.”