| Sewage Proposal Endorsed in Mexico
U.S. would
pay for Tijuana plant
By Sandra Dibble
STAFF WRITER
March 20, 2007
TIJUANA – It would be the biggest sewage
treatment plant the city has seen, and it wouldn't cost Mexico
a penny.
Won over by the possibility of free sewage treatment and the
prospect of a vast supply of recycled water, high-level Mexican
officials are openly endorsing a binational plant promoted
by a San Marcos company.
Though set in Tijuana, the $170 million facility
would be funded by U.S. taxpayers. Mexican officials have
said they lack the infrastructure and other resources to handle
sewage that flows from Tijuana to the South Bay via the Tijuana
River.
In the 1990s, the U.S. government built the
SBay International Wastewater Treatment Plant inSan Ysidro
to treat such sewage. That facility hanever met federal standards
for water quality. So to meet a court order, U.S. officials
have pickedBajagua to build a second plant 12 miles from San
Ysidro – near the confluence of the Alamar and Tijuana
rivers.
Mexican agencies are stepping up their support
of Bajagua despite sharp debate north of the border over the
project. U.S. opponents criticize how politically connected
Bajagua officials lined up backers in Congress, and they question
whether the plan will decrease pollution on South Bay beaches.
Bajagua's supporters on both sides of the
border say the project offers a unique approach that will
result in cleaner beaches in Tijuana as well as San Diego.
“The benefit is for both countries,”
said Arturo Herrera, commissioner of CILA, the Mexican arm
of the binational agency that is overseeing the process.
Even once-skeptical Baja California officials
now say they have been won over by the chance to address Tijuana's
growing needs for sewage treatment and new water resources.
Baja California Gov. Eugenio Elorduy recently
said he backs the project, as did Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank
Rhon, now on leave to run for governor.
Mexican federal water officials are quietly
backing the plan, saying they are prepared to make federally
controlled lands behind the city's main bus station available
for the plant.
Herrera and other government officials familiar
with the project are loath to discuss details, saying it is
premature until a contractor, design and site have been selected.
Three contractors are finalists for the project.
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| Though set in Tijuana, a $170
million treatment facility would be funded by U.S. taxpayers.
Mexico says it lacks the resources to handle sewage that
flows from Tijuana to the South Bay via the Tijuana River.
[Photo by Sandra Dibble / Union Tribune] |
While Bajagua gains support in Mexico, there
is no guarantee the facility will be built.
The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, which
is CILA's sister agency, said last month that upgrading its
existing plant at San Ysidro would be a better deal than Bajagua.
The U.S. option is expected to cost roughly $100 million.
In addition, Bajagua appears to be struggling
to meet a critical May 2 deadline to issue a construction
contract. On March 7, the U.S. boundary commission warned
California water regulators that Bajagua may need five more
months to meet the deadline. It's unclear how much more time
the U.S. commission, state officials and the courts will grant.
The commission is legally obligated to clean
25 million gallons a day of sewage treated at its San Ysidro
plant before discharging it into the ocean. That plant has
never met the treatment standard required by the U.S. Clean
Water Act, and now a court order is requiring compliance by
September 2008.
Bajagua officials not only pledge to improve
the treatment level to meet U.S. regulations, but also to
treat an additional 34 million gallons a day of wastewater
in Tijuana.
Then, the company would further treat the
water and resell it. The company's proponents in Mexico cite
that prospect as a huge plus for Tijuana. The region is almost
completely dependent on an aqueduct from the Colorado River.
The water could be used for industry, irrigation
and aquifer recharge, said Arturo Espinoza Jaramillo, Baja
California's secretary of infrastructure and urban development.
“The idea is that everybody wins,”
Espinoza said.
Bajagua plans to use private financing to
build and operate the plant. In 2004, the Congressional Budget
Office estimated the total cost to be about $600 million over
two decades. The U.S. government would repay the company in
installments over 20 years, after which the plant would be
turned over to Baja California.
Tijuana's sewage contamination problems require
a variety of measures, said José Luis Castro, a researcher
at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte. Bajagua could be part
of the solution, Castro said, but the city still needs to
build more drainage systems to capture runoff.
Having “a supply of water treated to
a secondary level is very important for Tijuana, . . . but
the city needs the resources so that users can access that
water,” Castro said.
U.S. detractors have criticized the International
Boundary and Water Commission's no-bid contracting process,
the lack of a finalized site and Bajagua's lack of experience
in building sewage treatment plants. They say the project
doesn't address a major cause of cross-border effluent that
pollutes San Diego beaches: the unconnected sewage that runs
down across the border from impoverished Tijuana neighborhoods.
Oscar Romo, coastal training program director
for the Tijuana Estuary in Imperial Beach, said Bajagua's
proposal to sell treated water leaves too many unanswered
questions: “Who's going to use it, store it, deliver
it, and control quality?” he asked.
“This project will have no impact on
reducing beach closures at all,” said Serge Dedina,
executive director of Wildcoast, an Imperial Beach-based environmental
group that staunchly opposes the project.
Romo and Dedina believe the correct approach
is to build several small treatment plants in sub-basins of
the Tijuana River watershed, using the treated water within
each basin. They are promoting a pilot project for 50 houses
in Los Laureles Canyon, directly uphill – and upstream
– from the Tijuana estuary.
For all the discussion north of the border,
debates in Mexico about the Bajagua plant until now have been
taking place behind closed doors. Even leaders of the maquiladora
sector, expected to be a major client of the plant's recycled
water, say they know little about the project.
José Carmelo Zavala, a biochemical
engineer who runs a nonprofit group in promoting environmentally
friendly manufacturing practices, said Tijuana, like most
cash-strapped Mexican cities, badly needs to expand its treatment
capacity. If the Bajagua project is built, “we'd more
than cover our necessities,” he said. “I see it
as very positive, but there are shadows that are worth discussing.
. . . There are things about Bajagua they're not telling us.”
Tijuana's estimated population of 1.5 million is expected
to double in the next 20 years, and treated water –
along with desalination – is increasingly being touted
as a way to cover the growing need.
By 2010, Tijuana's demand for water is expected
to overtake the current supply, most of it carried in by aqueduct
from the Colorado River. An aqueduct expansion would carry
Tijuana through 2018.
Bajagua has been quietly lobbying Mexican
officials for years, and its consultants include Ernesto Ruffo,
a former governor of Baja California.
“They've hired many engineers, some
of the most capable men in Tijuana to explain th project,”
said Miguel Avila, a former state water official now running
for mayor.
State officials are hoping savings generated
through the Bajagua plant will give them money to invest in
projects to collect raw sewage or deliver treated water.
“If they're treating the water, I'd
lower my own costs,” said José Guadalupe Zamorano,
head of the state's public service agency in Tijuana. “And
since I'll be spending less, I'll have a greater chance to
build more infrastructure.”
State and federal water agencies are considering building
a 12.5-mile line to carry recycled water from a future treatment
plant in eastern Tijuana to the Otay Mesa industrial area.
They have begun asking businesses about their interest in
such a project.
Saúl García Huerta, president
of the 250-member Tijuana Maquiladora Association, said 15
to 20 percent of his members are heavy water users, with their
own on-site water treatment plants. But they could be persuaded
to switch to a public distribution system.
“This could sound attractive and interesting
for maquiladoras, but it needs to be competitive,” Garcia
said.
But José Ibarra, who heads the Association of Otay
Mesa Industrialists, is not entirely convinced about the feasibility
of selling treated water and investing in new pipelines to
deliver it.
“We need to know that this water will
be guaranteed,” Ibarra said.
Sandra Dibble:
(619) 293-1716; sandra.dibble@uniontrib.com
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