| US - Mexico approve pact on sewage
Commission will have oversight
of the selection of contractors
By Leslie Wolf Branscomb
STAFF WRITER
February 26, 2004
Mexican and U.S. water officials have signed
a treaty agreement that will provide for cleaner, secondary
treatment of sewage from Mexico more than three years after
Congress passed a bill asking for it.
‘I’m ecstatic,” said Rep.
Bob Filner, who co-authored the legislation. “This treaty
represents the beginning of the end of a 50-year-old problem.”
The U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission,
or IBWC, announced Monday that an amendment to the treaty
governing water treatment on the border was signed Friday.
The treaty originally called for the raw Mexican
sewage that flows across the border to be treated in the United
States.
However, the bill written by Filner, D-San
Diego, and former Rep. Brian Bilbray, R Imperial Beach, called
for that portion of the treaty to be renegotiated so that
the sewage could be treated on the Mexican side. It was signed
into law by President Clinton in November 2000.
The intent was to pave the way for Bajagua,
a private-public partnership that proposed to build a for-profit
sewage treatment plant in Tijuana.
The treaty signed Friday is not final until
it is approved by the state departments of both countries,
and it does not automatically give the project to Bajagua.
“There’s been so much maneuvering
back and forth,” Bilbray said. “Hopefully, this
time they will try to get something completed.
“If this project can work, it can really
set a precedent for environmental projects overseas.”
Filner said he hopes the process will move
quickly, now that the new U.S. IBWC commissioner, Arturo Q.
Duran, has been sworn in.
For more than three years, critics complained
that the IBWC, under Commissioner Carlos Ramirez, was not
moving forward on the treaty negotiations.
Last year, Ramirez was diagnosed with a brain
disease called frontotemperal dementia. He took a leave of
absence in July and resigned in November.
Duran, who has sewed on the federal Joint Public
Advisory Committee of the Commission for Environmental Cooperation,
was sworn into office last week.
The sewage that flows over the border is treated
to the advanced primary standard at the International Wastewater
Treatment Plant in the Tijuana River Valley on the U.S. side
and discharged into the ocean off Imperial Beach.
State and federal laws require sewage treatment
to the cleaner secondary standard, but the issue of what kind
of plant to build, and where, has been debated ever since.
IBWC spokeswoman Sally Spener said the treaty
amendment is an important step toward upgrading to secondary
treatment.
“It spells out how we’re going
to get there,” she said.
The agreement provides for a sewage treatment
plant with a capacity of 59 million gallons a day. It states
that the project will be implemented through a private-public
partnership, and the IBWC will have oversight of the selection
of contractors.
“It’s my understanding that this
is the framework for a project to go forward,” said
Imperial Beach City Councilwoman Mayda Winter, who has long
been active in border sewage issues. “It is not about
a specific project.”
“Any movement forward is good,”
Winter said. “But if it’s contingent on funding,
this is certainly not the final word.”
Officials with Bajagua were optimistic.
“We’re really encouraged,”
spokesman Craig Benedetto said. “Now that this is done,
we can move beyond it and talk. Any dialogue will help.”
“The main thing is this project is going
to be done, and that’s great,” said David Gomez,
president of the Tia Juana Valley County Water District Board
of Directors, which has worked on border sewage issues for
years.
Leslie Branscomb:
(619) 498-6630; Leslie.branscomb@uniontrib.com
Staff writer Terry Rodgers contributed to
this story.
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