Tijuana Spill Soils Progress on Border Cleanup

Ironically, the overflow of raw sewage Friday from Tijuana worsened San Diego’s oceanfront nightmare at a time of progress in fighting the longtime border sewage problem.

Up to 12 million gallons of untreated sewage have flowed across the international border from Tijuana daily in recent years. For half a century, San Diego area beaches have been periodically closed as ocean currents pushed the foul discharge north.

Its origin: expanding residential neighborhoods in Tijuana, a city of more than 1.5 million people where population growth and poverty overwhelm infrastructure. Its path: the Tijuana River and adjacent gullies and arroyos.

The phenomenon has spawned foul odors, mosquitoes and health complaints from residents of border and coastal areas, while threatening two federally protected ecosystems. One stretch of beach extending 2 1/2 miles north of the border has been closed for six years.

There has been recent progress in cleaning up the mess: Tijuana has upgraded its sewage disposal system. San Diego implemented a project in October in which the Point Loma water treatment plant began diverting and treating the bulk of the Mexican sewage runoff, drying up the Tijuana River’s fetid advance.

And the new federal budget unveiled this week promised additional funding for a planned $200-million treatment plant at the border; the plant scheduled for completion in early 1995 is seen as a fundamental solution.

“It had been a lot cleaner down there,” said John Woodard, an aide to County Supervisor Brian Bilbray--cleaner to the point that authorities were considering lifting the longtime closure of the beach at Border Field State Park.

But this week’s heavy rains exceeded the capacity of both Tijuana’s sewer system and the Point Loma diversion effort, said Gary Stephany, director of environmental health for San Diego County. The resumed river flow and unfortunately timed ocean currents impelled the sewage northward and brought beach closures as far as the Silver Strand and Coronado.

“It’s not been quite this bad in the past,” Stephany said. “We’ve only had to go as far as Coronado once or twice.”

Imperial Beach lifeguard Bob Patton knew what was in store by 11 a.m., when he got to work and got a whiff of the ocean breeze.

“It had that reek,” he said. “The water is brown.”

The county health department ordered the beach off-limits shortly afterward.

Even before Friday, the stain from nationally broadcast news of San Diego’s sewage woes had spread to the picture-postcard Hotel Del Coronado, according to hotel spokesperson Nancy Weisinger. Several people called from out-of-town to cancel reservations after hearing about this week’s pipeline rupture at Point Loma, she said.

“We issued a statement that our water has not been affected in any way, although today the city of Coronado has asked people not to swim in the ocean,” she said. “People on the East Coast hear about sewage and they think all of California has been shut down.”

That misperception aside, much of San Diego’s coastline remains at risk if predicted weekend storms materialize, Stephany said.

More rain will produce more Tijuana River sewage flow; that would increase the possibility that the raw sewage from the border could ultimately mix with treated sewage from the ruptured pipeline, he said.

“As much as we need rain and storms,” he said, referring to the drought, “we don’t need them right now.”

Weather Worsens Sewage Woes Thursday’s storm, which came up from the south, delivered a pair of environmental blows to the San Diego County coastline-forcing the closure of almost a third of the county’s beaches. Sewage from spill: The storm spread the effluent from the San Diego sewage treatment plant northward, polluting beaches at Sunset Cliffs, Ocean Beach and up to the flood control channel.That sewage has been partly treated. Raw Sewage: The winds blew raw sewage from the Tijuana River northward, forcing the closure of beaches in Coronado, Imperial Beach and at Silver Strand. Untreated sewage from Mexico usually affects only a 2-mile stretch of the coast.