Save Bajagua
The Senate should foil agency's foul move
July 12, 2007

How many federal bureaucrats does it take to perpetuate Tijuana sewage fouling San Diego waters?

One – the chief bureaucrat at the International Boundary and Water Commission.
That's one too many. Yet this agency has impeded from the start a project that would clean up Tijuana sewage flowing into San Diego waters. The IBWC's latest ploy is slipping into a budget bill $66 million to upgrade its existing water treatment plant on this side of the border. That plant was way late in getting built, way over budget and way below essential capacity and treatment levels. And $66 million won't cover the upgrades required.

The preferable plan is a proposal by Bajagua LLC, a San Marcos firm that has spent more than a decade and millions preparing to build a plant in Tijuana that would treat more sewage sooner than the commission's. The firm also plans to profit from selling the attendant reclaimed water to industries and businesses in Mexico, and share any profits with the federal government. Its share could lessen, or even erase, U.S. taxpayers' costs on the project.

No thanks to the commission's supposed cross-border diplomacy, Bajagua itself has reached informal agreements with Mexico, received three bids on the initial design and can resume quickly.

But that depends on the Senate. Congress and two presidents authorized the Bajagua project long ago. Apparently, however, the IBWC and its staff ultimately decided that their distaste for public-private partnerships and their utter disdain for private profits from public water trumped Congress and two presidents.
Here we have a federal commission asserting a veto it doesn't have over its boss and its banker. Surely the White House can call off this dogged obstructionism. Even sooner, however, the Senate should reject that $66 million out of the budget bill, ending the commission's boondoggle and letting Bajagua proceed.

If all goes well, Bajagua plans to finish its facility by September 2009. That's a year later than the date a court ordered. The federal judge will surely take judicial notice, however, that Bajagua's plant will be in service years ahead of the the commission's proposed update. Then, too, Bajagua is best placed as the starting point for the next step: stopping the northern flow of Tijuana sewage, period.

Apparently the hubris of the International Boundary and Water Commission, which has so riled Reps.

Brian Bilbray, R-Oceanside, and Bob Filner, D-San Diego, will be blessedly missing from that discussion.

The commission considers upgrading its existing facility a “comprehensive” solution to the problem – meaning fulfillment of its legal responsibilities. They don't include ending the pollution's impact on the Tijuana estuary or San Diego's beaches. Bajagua's plan would start that process, if – and only if – the Senate votes to save it.