In 2017, Professor James Cooper attended a public forum on Tijuana sewage contamination where citizens were invited to hear government officials explain what was being done to staunch the fecal pollution of San Diego County beaches.
That session, like many others, didn’t go well.
“(It) was less a meeting and more of an expression of exasperation. Malodorous scents emanated from the nearby sewage,” Cooper noted in a written account. “(But) it was worth the trip just to witness the dysfunction.”
“Both a U.S. flag and a Mexican flag were displayed in the Meeting Room, but no one on the U.S. side spoke Spanish nor possessed any materials from the Mexican side that were translated into English. Yet both the Mexican and U.S. citizens at the meeting wanted to hold their public officials accountable for doing something about the seemingly endless spills of sewage.”
“Sighs of frustration and outright incredulity abounded.”
Professor James Cooper on a 2017 public forum on the Tijuana sewage crisis.
“Sighs of frustration and outright incredulity abounded. Two California State Park rangers, each armed with a handgun, watched from the back of the meeting room. One ranger explained that the gun was necessary ‘just in case people get a little pumped up and to keep the discourse civil.’ … During the meeting, one man incredulously asked out loud: ‘Isn’t there a Hague Court that can deal with this?'”
Over and over during the past century, public outrage over Tijuana wastewater woes has triggered political rhetoric, blue-ribbon studies, protests, lawsuits and promises – only to end with the same old solution: pathogen-filled water flowing into the Pacific Ocean and across the border.
The Coronado News is investigating a nearly century-long legacy of broken promises by the United States and Mexican officials that has caused this public health crisis and exposed beachgoers, U.S. Border Patrol agents and U.S. Navy SEALS to fecal microbes, E. Coli, salmonella and MRSA.
Cooper, the director of international legal studies at California Western School of Law in San Diego, documented that futility last year in an article titled, “Same as It Ever Was: The Tijuana River Sewage Crisis.”
Cooper, in an interview, noted that while environmental laws in Mexico are pretty stringent, enforcement, “however, is not always.”
Beach walk becomes spinal meningitis
Serge Dedina, former mayor of Imperial Beach and a co-founder of the Wildcoast marine conservation organization, said horrendous sewage spills early in 2017 from Tijuana laid bare the governmental failures.
Over several weeks that year, 143 million gallons of raw sewage filled the Tijuana River from broken pipes and collectors, oozing into the ocean as authorities pointed fingers of blame at one another.
When city officials raised concerns, Dedina said, it exposed “a complete lack of transparency and accountability on the Mexican side, and the lack of responsibility on the U.S. side.
“We were really shocked by how unprepared and unconcerned the United States government was,”
-Former Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina.
“We were really shocked by how unprepared and unconcerned the United States government was,” he said.
That March, Imperial Beach resident Suzanne Parish contracted spinal meningitis after walking with her husband, Mitch McKay, along the beach south of the Boco Rio – near the mouth of the estuary.
The couple said they typically would pick up garbage along their walks, and she never dreamed she’d get sick from walking barefoot in the area. Further, back then there were no San Diego County warning signs about the dangers of the water.
“It was really horrible,” said Parish, who spent 12 days in a hospital in Coronado and incurred over $70,000 in hospital bills of which the couple paid just more than $12,000.
Her stay also included a visit from representatives from the regional Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, she said.
Today, McKay serves on the Imperial Beach City Council and his district includes most of the beachfront. He’s also a 3-year member of the Citizen Forum Board for the U.S. side of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a body created by the United States and Mexico in 1889 to find solutions over border issues.
Parish said she hadn’t publicly shared her story until she saw the recent Coronado News investigation on the sewage crisis.
The couple said it’s time for politicians to quit bickering and find a permanent solution that includes wastewater reclamation to stop tens of millions of gallons of raw sewage from flowing from the Tijuana River Valley and into the Pacific Ocean.
McKay believes the total cost of such a comprehensive solution could exceed $1.2 billion.
“To think you could get spinal meningitis and almost die from walking the surf line.”
-Imperial Beach Councilman Mitch McKay on the circumstances of his wife, Suzanne.
“Everyone who surfs in Imperial Beach is sure to get surfer ear, a rash, or a scratchy throat from the water,” McKay said. “You have to earn those stripes for being in dirty water. But, to think you could get spinal meningitis and almost die from walking the surf line….And, we have seen a lot of other people walk down there.”
McKay said the residents of Imperial Beach have for too long suffered from “apathy and social injustice.”
Rains this winter once again caused the Tijuana River to dump sewage into the sea, and a pipeline rupture in August shut down San Diego County beaches at the height of tourist season, spewing 30 million gallons daily of raw wastewater.
South Bay plant once “the solution”
The South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, built with U.S. money on the north side of the border to handle Tijuana’s excess effluent, was once perceived as “the solution.”
But even that huge project was a boondoggle, according to Dedina: It was planned in the 1970s, didn’t get designed until the 1980s, and wasn’t constructed until the 1990s – after Tijuana’s sewage output had more than doubled.
The plant hugs the U.S.-Mexico border, about 17 miles south of Coronado. At its entrance, seagulls and ducks sit along the Tijuana River while turkey vultures fly overhead.
To the south, cars zoom along the highway in Tijuana as three fences, including a double bollard one with razor wire that’s largely intended to keep migrants from illegally crossing into the United States, protect the plant.
However, with large holes in parts of the main fence, immigrants daily congregate just south of the plant on the American side and wait for U.S. Border Patrol agents to arrest and process them, according to Morgan Rogers, area operations manager for the San Diego Field office of the IBWC.
“We see a lot of immigrants, and they are from all over the world,” said Rogers as at least 15 people, including a blond haired mother with three young children, waited for the Border Patrol in mid-January.
The area also can be dangerous: Rogers noted a dead body was left just outside the plant during the past few months.
Unexpected challenges
The plant was designed to treat on average 25 million gallons of sewage a day that comes from Tijuana, but in early March it was treating about 30 million gallons daily, according to IBWC records provided to The Coronado News.
The sheer volume of human waste creates unexpected challenges, and the plant has been receiving “excess flows since August 2022,” when a Mexican pipeline was damaged, records show.
Settling ponds at the international treatment plant are used to separate wastes from water. As solids sink, they form a toxic sludge mixed with heavy metals, pesticides and other industrial byproducts.
Tons of this sludge get scooped each day into giant trucks and hauled through a special gate in the border fence to hills south of Tijuana.
Gary Sirota, an environmental attorney, said the gunk gets dumped near the ocean, and subsequent rains send the seepage downhill into a prime surfing beach.
Sirota said most people don’t understand a fundamental aspect of the whole controversy.
For Americans, the concern is pollution and health.
But, for Mexico, it’s about water.
With Tijuana growing and Colorado River supplies getting reduced, the city keeps demanding its share.
“The U.S. was screaming, ‘Clean up your sewage problem,’” Sirota said, “and Mexico was yelling, ‘Well, give us our water.’”
A $474 million fix
That, then, is the filthy, historic reality.
A century-long infusion of feces, urine and pathogens invades south San Diego County beaches. An alphabet soup of government agencies conducts studies, convenes meetings, contests lawsuits and promises fixes – while average folks wait.
Now, finally and once again, officials are promising a major overhaul of Tijuana’s sewage infrastructure.
In August, the IBWC – along with a host of other agencies – announced plans to spend $474 million on Tijuana sewage infrastructure improvements, with the majority of the money coming from the United States.
In addition to that bilateral agreement, there were settlements of lawsuits filed by Imperial Beach, the Surfrider Foundation, the state of California and others, accusing the IBWC of polluting beaches in violation of the environmental laws.
“I think the lawsuits were an outcry from our stakeholders to do something.”
-Maria-Elena Giner, the current U.S. IBWC commissioner.
“I think the lawsuits were an outcry from our stakeholders to do something,” noted Maria-Elena Giner, the current U.S. IBWC commissioner. “And I hold our agency accountable.”
Plans call for $330 million in U.S. spending to more than double the capacity of the South Bay treatment plant.
That would reduce the number of days that Tijuana River sewage surges across the border from 133 to 26 – a 76 percent drop – according to the EPA.
Meanwhile, Mexico has vowed to spend $144 million to replace a defunct wastewater facility at Punta Bandera, six miles south of Tijuana.
That project is expected to reduce by 80% the raw sewage flows which, in summer, get carried by currents to beaches in San Diego County.
Work on those projects is not expected to begin for at least three years.
According to the EPA, those projects comprise a first phase of work.
Over a longer period, the agency says, another $327 million in spending is planned for more treatment plant expansions, diversion systems, pipelines and other infrastructure in Tijuana.
If funding is authorized and all projects on the EPA list get carried out, total costs will exceed $800 million.
Key caveat
But the international agreement known as Minute No. 328, contains a caveat: Everything in IBWC’s plan is “subject to the availability of funds.”
Although the initial $330 million in U.S. financing already has been allocated, Mexico has yet to appropriate any money for its share of costs.
The government agencies and environmental organizations that sued IBWC apparently agreed to drop their litigation based on the adoption of Minute No. 328 – without enforcement provisions.
The civil complaint filed by Imperial Beach and others alleged that the commission has “utterly failed their legal and moral mandates” to protect public health and the environment.
“Pollution flowing through the Tijuana River onto local beaches grows more severe.”
-Civil complaint filed by Imperial Beach and others.
“Instead of addressing these issues, defendants falsely herald their past achievements while the pollution flowing through the Tijuana River onto local beaches grows more severe.”
A separate suit filed by Surfrider Foundation alleged: “At its core, this case is about the dereliction of duty and wanton disregard for public health at the hands of a federal public agency. By making bare minimum improvements and blaming any lag in progress on Mexico’s inaction, USIBWC has disregarded not only its agency mandate but also the established requirements of U.S. federal law.”
The settlement requires the commission to prevent, report and clean up Tijuana sewage spills.
However, it contains no penalty for failure to carry out that duty.
‘A turning point’ in history
In a response to written questions from The Coronado News, Baja California’s water management secretary, José Armando Fernández Samaniego, and Víctor Daniel Amador Barragán, who heads the Tijuana office of the state’s public service commission, said the projects mark “a turning point in the history of resource management and binational commitment.”
Those Mexican officials also said the “cross-border flow issues are being addressed by all the authorities on both sides of the border that have a role in the issue.”
Giner, who became U.S. IBWC commissioner in 2021, previously served as general manager of the Border Environment Cooperation Commission, directing $8 billion in investments on infrastructure projects.
Asked what assurance the public has that plans for Tijuana sewage mitigation will be carried out, Giner said, “They’ve got me, all that credibility… I can understand people’s skepticism,” she added. “We’ve been talking about this for how long?”
One more boondoggle?
Brian Bilbray, a former Imperial Beach mayor, worries that the latest plan is just one more boondoggle because there is nothing forcing the commission or Mexican government to follow through.
“If you don’t have an enforcement clause,” Bilbray warned, “That’s where it fails.”
But Dedina, who became mayor after Bilbray and spearheaded the lawsuit against IBWC, said the commission has transformed from an adversary to a partner in the past couple years, striving to overcome a legacy of failure.
As for the planned fixes of Tijuana sewage infrastructure, he said, “It’s exactly what we’ve been asking for.”
Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey agreed.
The good news is it’s no longer a question of if, it’s a question of when.”
-Coronado Mayor Richard Bailey on improvements to the international wastewater plant.
“The good news is it’s no longer a question of if, it’s a question of when,” Bailey said. “And the when is getting closer and closer.”
Cooper, the California Western professor who investigated Tijuana’s sewage conundrum, welcomed a plan to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure, but also issued a warning: “Whatever they’re proposing is still not enough. This is a chronic, decades-long problem.”
