Border-Crossing Sewage Fouls U.S. Beaches : Sanitation: Untreated waste from Tijuana’s antiquated system has flowed onto San Diego County shores. Despite protests, Mexican officials have been slow to address the problem.

In an ominous escalation of the border sewage problem, the antiquated Tijuana sewage system has spewed millions of gallons of raw sewage onto the beaches of San Diego County this summer.

Health officials have posted danger signs along 10 miles of beaches, Rep. Bob Filner (D-San Diego) sent a tough-worded letter to Mexican President Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and officials of the International Boundary and Water Commission were ordered by the Clinton Administration to stem the flow of untreated sewage into the United States from an overtaxed Tijuana pumping station.

“The Mexicans can’t act like we’re their private toilet,” said David Gomez, a leader of Citizens Revolting Against Pollution, a politically active group of Tijuana River Valley homeowners.

As an emergency measure, the plant last week began pumping sewage to the San Diego municipal plant at Point Loma rather than letting it spill into the west-flowing Tijuana River and onto beaches from the border to Coronado’s Silver Strand.

“The transmission of sewage endangers the health of thousands of Americans, is destroying the economy of the border community, and represents a serious obstacle to building closer U.S.-Mexico relations,” Filner wrote to Salinas.

Salinas has yet to reply to Filner. Gina Escamilla, spokeswoman for the Public Services Commission of Tijuana, which oversees the operation of the sewage system, said her agency does not comment on the status of sewage spills once sewage crosses the international border.

The border area has long been plagued by sewage from neighborhoods in Tijuana that are not part of the Tijuana sewage system. Sewage from privies and septic tanks washes down from the hills in so-called renegade flows and into the Tijuana River. The river begins in Mexico and flows into the Pacific Ocean north of the border.

But the recent spill is different and considered a more serious health threat.

The polluted water that began spilling across the border into the river about 10 days ago had been collected as part of the Tijuana sewage system and thus had not been diluted by rainwater or other runoff.

“This flow is not part of any natural river course but rather it is a deliberate transmission of concentrated, untreated waste water to the international border,” Filner said.

Testing showed that it carried up to 30 times the level of fecal bacteria in the polluted water from neighborhoods unconnected to the system.

The spillage also raised the specter of a wholesale breakdown of the Tijuana system, with the Point Loma plant being required to treat an increasing volume of Tijuana sewage, costing American taxpayers millions of dollars.

The amount of the spillage from the plant is unclear. One estimate is that the pumping plant may have spewed up to 5 million gallons a day for up to a week into Stewart’s Drain, a large drain pipe that runs beneath the iron border fence and empties on U.S. territory about a mile from the San Ysidro border crossing.

Rene Valenzuela, a spokesman for the International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational effort at solving pollution problems, said the solution to the Tijuana sewage problem lies in an international plant expected to be open late in this decade.

But Filner predicts that the plant will be too small. He has recommended that the plant be twice as big as planned and that Mexico absorb the cost of the expansion.

“If the Mexicans can spend millions lobbying for NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement), they can spend millions on their sewage,” said Gomez, who runs a horse ranch just west of Stewart’s Drain.

The city of Imperial Beach has been particularly hard hit. Throughout the summer, polluted water from the Tijuana River has caused warnings to be posted at the beaches, even before the super-toxic spill began.

Use of the city beaches has decreased dramatically and the tourist-dependent economy has suffered.

“This sewage stuff has been devastating to Imperial Beach,” said Barbara Chism, executive director of the Imperial Beach Chamber of Commerce. “The Mexicans get caught red-handed dumping sewage onto us and nobody does anything. I’m so mad I want to shoot somebody.”

Adding to the anger of Filner, Chism and others is the fact that Mexican sewage system operators apparently did not notify their U.S. counterparts when the sewage began to flow from Stewart’s Drain. The discovery was made by the Border Patrol, which notified Filner and county health authorities.

Having the Point Loma plant treat the sewage from the Tijuana plant is a partial solution at best. The flow into Stewart’s Drain has decreased but not dried up.

The Point Loma plant has been treating Tijuana River sewage for several years. The cost this year will be about $2.5 million for treating 13 million gallons a day; for the first time, the cost will be reimbursed by Congress.

However, while it is treating sewage from the Tijuana plant, the Point Loma plant has less capacity to treat the Tijuana River sewage. The result is that renegade-flow sewage will most likely continue to lap onto shores in Imperial Beach and other San Diego County communities, albeit at a lower level of toxicity than sewage from the Tijuana plant.

“Either way, we lose,” Chism said.