As the chief executive of Veolia North America, the company contracted by the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) to operate the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, I read your May 2 story “Veolia: A look at the track record of a mega-corporation operating the border sewage plant” with close interest and some unease.
Veolia is in the news because opportunistic lawyers have filed flimsy lawsuits against our company, blaming our hardworking employees for the sewage issues that everyone else acknowledges are caused by Mexico. We had hoped your story would independently evaluate those claims and recognize that Veolia is at the forefront of fixing those problems. Instead, your story focuses on decades-old allegations from all over the world that have nothing to do with what we do in San Diego every day – treating more of Tijuana’s sewage than anyone else, including Tijuana.
The lawyers suing us have succeeded in getting your attention, but not in proving their outlandish claims. They have made outrageous accusations about Veolia at press conferences, but haven’t backed it up in their legal filings or court appearances. The U.S. government underfunded the South Bay plant for many years and denied Veolia’s requests to make vital repairs, but the U.S. government’s shortcomings pale in comparison to the millions of gallons of raw sewage that flow from Mexico directly into the Tijuana River and Pacific Ocean, polluting America every day without ever being directed to the South Bay plant.
Scientists, elected officials and government experts agree that those uncontrolled flows are the source of sewage polluting the beaches and waters of San Diego – and of Tijuana as well. It is obvious from the brown plumes in the ocean and the green muck in the river; from the testimony of Mexican environmental activists who see the sewage polluting their side of the border as well; and most recently during the visit of new U.S. Environmental Protection Administrator Lee Zeldin.
On behalf of Veolia’s San Diego-based employees who work around the clock at the South Bay plant protecting Coronado and the rest of the region from Mexico’s sewage, I wish you would have spent more time examining the facts on the ground that affect your readers, rather than dredging up Google hits about Veolia from long ago and far away.
As your story acknowledges, any company with more than 200,000 employees, running thousands of complicated environmental cleanup projects in dozens of countries, will run into occasional challenges.
To respond to just three of your examples, all of which occurred more than a decade ago: In Flint, Michigan, jurors didn’t agree with the meritless allegations lawyers made about Veolia; in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where Veolia warned that the sewer line the town designed was flawed and might fail, no one ever proved Veolia did anything wrong despite years of legal proceedings; in Pittsburgh, the head of the sewer authority said Veolia wasn’t to blame for lead issues caused by century-old infrastructure. We take our work seriously and we’ll defend our reputation, but we’d rather spend our time focused on how to help San Diego.
The real measure of how well Veolia does its job is the thousands of clients like the IBWC that trust us to run their operations well. We take that obligation seriously in San Diego, and a news story that simply offers a he-said, she-said take on one of Coronado’s most pressing issues isn’t the coverage your region deserves.
I invite the Coronado News to tour the South Bay plant and see for yourselves what Veolia does there to protect the region, as well as the damage caused by Mexico’s uncontrolled sewage and sediment flows. We’re confident that the story you’ll see is compelling – and makes clear what’s really happening at the South Bay plant.
Karine Rougé is the chief executive officer of Veolia North America’s Municipal Water services.
