Tijuana sewage that has fouled Coronado’s coastline and sickened beach users for years will not be staunched anytime soon, despite more money being funneled to wastewater treatment projects this year.
That was the big take-away from a news conference staged March 28 at the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, and from a public forum that evening at the Coronado Community Center.
Nevertheless, Maria-Elena Giner, who leads the U.S. half of the International Boundary and Water Commission, said she is “cautiously optimistic” that efforts on both sides of the border will soon reduce the transborder flow of pollutants.
The Boundary Commission, typically referred to as IBWC, is responsible for resolving water, sewage and other issues along the 2,000-mile U.S.- Mexico border.
Giner was blunt about her agency’s historic failure to stem the onslaught of sewage from Tijuana into the Pacific, where it is transported by currents north across the border to San Diego County beaches.
A drastically underfunded plant
She said she took office in 2021 and immediately discovered the commission was drastically underfunded, “not very transparent,” and had for years followed a practice of reacting to sewage spills, rather than preventing them.
Giner said the South Bay plant, built with U.S. money on the American side of the border to treat Mexican sewage, was particularly flawed because of an inadequate maintenance budget. She compared the plant to an automobile whose owner didn’t schedule regular oil changes, but just waited until the vehicle broke down to see a mechanic. From 2010-20, she said, the facility built in 1997 received an average of $4 million per year for maintenance.
“What people were used to was an era of ‘We do what we can with what we have, and we don’t ask for more,” Giner said. “We have historically been a reactive agency, just fixing things that are wrong.”
As a result, each rainy season the Tijuana River fills with millions of gallons of toilet waste and industrial pollutants mixed with storm run-off, overwhelming the plant and releasing raw sewage into the ocean – a problem that persists today.
“Our plant right now is not in compliance. It doesn’t make sense. We’re a federal facility operated by the federal government that doesn’t comply with federal law.”
-Maria-Elena Giner, commissioner of the International Boundary and Water Commission.
“Our plant right now is not in compliance,” Giner admitted. “It doesn’t make sense. We’re a federal facility operated by the federal government that doesn’t comply with federal law.”
Giner stressed that there is hope thanks to an infusion of funding on the U.S. side plus commitments from Mexico to repair pipelines, pumps and a broken-down wastewater treatment plant at Punta Bandera, about six miles south of the border.
“I’m personally involved in this,” Giner said. “I know every detail that’s going on… And we’re going to get things done.”
A future plagued by uncertainty
At the same time, however, she acknowledged a future plagued by uncertainty. The total cost of fixing wastewater infrastructure on both sides of the border remains murky, but has been estimated at $700 million to $1 billion. Yet the amount of money appropriated so far falls dramatically short.
Repairs and expansion of the South Bay plant, according to Giner, are expected to cost $600 million “plus or minus 30%.” To date, IBWC has received $300 million from the Environmental Protection Agency for that work.
Giner said IBWC also will be able to use most of a $103 million funding increase recently adopted by Congress for work on the South Bay facility. Still, at the very least, available money is $200 million short of expected costs for the plant.
Furthermore, the Boundary Commission has identified $100 million worth of work that needs to be done on Tijuana River levies, with no funding yet available.
Giner stressed that repair work is already underway at the South Bay plant, and she expects it to comply with federal standards by year’s end.
Because of the health and safety urgency, she added, the expansion will be handled as a design-build project with bids and contracting to start later this year. The expansion is expected to double the plant’s daily treatment output to 50 million gallons, with a peak capacity of 75 million gallons.
Meanwhile, in Mexico, the government has promised to spend $144 million fixing broken pipelines, failed pumps and the dormant wastewater treatment plant at Punta Bandera. However, Giner said, Mexico has only identified funding sources for 30% of that work.
Because the Punta Bandera wastewater facility is out of commission, millions more gallons of raw sewage flow pour into the ocean there and in prime beach season are carried north by summer currents.
Giner said $33 million has been appropriated for that project – overseen by the Mexican army and already underway — with a promised completion date of September. However, she expressed skepticism, saying, “I find it impossible to believe (the project will be finished) by then.”
Expensive breakdowns overwhelm plant
Beyond those major projects, Giner and other IBWC officials described a plethora of expensive breakdowns in Tijuana’s sewage infrastructure system, all of them overwhelming the South Bay plant. The list includes failed pumps, broken pipelines and clogged canyon collectors, plus a Mexican highway construction project that – due to a lack of erosion controls — has inundated the South Bay treatment facility with dirt, shutting down key systems.
During a tour of the South Bay facility Mar. 28, plant managers described how the Tijuana River onslaught wrecks a multi-stage treatment process. Skimmers, grates, pumps and rollers —— designed to remove trash and sediment from the water – become clogged and break down. The plant has five skimmers, for example, all currently out of commission. It relies on six enormous pumps, three of which are out of commission. The pumps cost about $500,000 each.
When primary treatment is completed, wastewater is sent into a secondary system for bio-chemical treatment that also becomes overburdened, leading to breakdowns.
The result: untreated and partially treated wastes are pumped out to sea. In the past year, IBWC officials estimated, 22.8 billion gallons flowed down the Tijuana River toward the treatment plant. About 30 million gallons per day is raw sewage, according to Morgan Rogers, area operations manager for IBWC’s field office in San Diego.
On a normal day, Rogers said, so much sediment and solid sewage are extracted that eight giant trucks haul the sludge back to Mexico, each carrying more than 22 tons. But, because the South Bay plant has been crippled, only four loads are currently required.
Despite all the challenges, Giner said, the South Bay plant is “targeted” to comply with federal environmental laws and permit requirements by this August.
President Biden’s recently proposed appropriation package sought $310 million in funding for U.S. IBWC. Congress instead authorized $156 million, but that is roughly triple the norm and officials have touted that boost as a major victory.
Approximately 40 citizens in attendance
At the meeting of a San Diego Citizens Forum board, Larry Cohen, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas, said local, state and federal leaders finally combined forces with activist groups to force action.
“We have created a snowball of momentum through teamwork and collaboration.”
-Larry Cohen, chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Juan Vargas.
“We have created a snowball of momentum through teamwork and collaboration,” Cohen said. By securing more money this year, he added, “We bought time to expand, modernize and stabilize” the border sewage infrastructure.
But there were also naysayers among the approximately 40 citizens in attendance. One man, who declined to give his name, said the U.S. should use inflatable dams to back sewage water into Mexico.
“Why are we spending all this money doing a bunch of work to basically fix what is a Mexico problem?” he asked.
Others worried that, once the South Bay plant expands, its increased outfall will cause even more beach closure days under current public-health testing protocols. Unless a higher percentage of fecal solids are removed during treatment, said Leon Benham, a member of the forum’s board, “We will never have our beaches open.”
