Contract Awarded on Border Sewage Plant

A Carlsbad company will receive an $8.8-million federal contract to design a sewage treatment plant in San Diego that will handle waste from Tijuana, it was announced Tuesday.

The multimillion-dollar contract was awarded by the International Boundary and Water Commission to Malcolm Pirnie, a 50-year-old company with experience in similar border region treatment plants.

Malcolm Pirnie will handle architectural and engineering services for the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, a facility needed to stop pollution of the ocean.

“We have raw sewage that flows into San Diego,” said Libby Tortorici, spokesman for Malcolm Pirnie. Tortorici said it will take 18 months to design the plant, and 30 more months to build it.

Malcolm Pirnie is designing two other sewage treatment plants near Texas and Arizona that are similar to the one envisioned in South Bay, except that they are on the Mexican side of the border.

“We don’t anticipate any obstacles in the Tijuana project, and we will be working closely with the South Bay International Water Treatment Plant,” Tortorici said. He said the plant will probably employ 60 to 80 people.

A spokesman for Commissioner Narendera N. Gunaji of the International Boundary and Water Commission said the treatment plant will be able to handle 25 million gallons a day and will be coordinated and funded by both the United States and Mexico.

The Tijuana project in South Bay is part of a joint plan by both countries calling for $241 million in border environmental-cleanup projects across the county in fiscal year 1993, including $69 million for second-year construction of the Tijuana sewage-treatment plant.

The cost of building the plant is estimated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at more than $406 million.