Union-Tribune Editorial

Talks begin on building sewage plant in Mexico

January 19, 2001
By Amy Oakes

The federal agency overseeing the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant has begun negotiations toward constructing a secondary treatment facility in Mexico.

Plans to build sewage treatment ponds on the U.S. side of the border, in the Tijuana River Valley, were scrapped after a recent bill was passed by Congress authorizing the secondary plant in Mexico. The legislation was crafted by Reps. Brian Bilbray and Bob Filner to help advance a project known as Bajagua, which would create a public-private partnership for building a for-profit plant in Tijuana.

The bill was signed into law in November, just as the agency, the International Boundary and Water Commission, was finalizing design plans for the open-air ponds.

"We don't have the funds to build them," said Sally Spener, an IBWC spokeswoman. "The bill directs us to look south of the border."

Spener told a group of concerned residents and local officials at a community meeting Wednesday that she does not know when an agreement with the Mexican government will be reached. In the meantime, she said, the IBWC will conduct a study on improving the quality of treatment at the existing plant.

The meeting was one in a series held by IBWC officials on border sewage issues. For years, the United States has had a problem with raw Mexican sewage flowing across the border.

The $260 million International Wastewater Treatment Plant was built just north of the border in the Tijuana River Valley in 1997, and the outfall pipe that takes the treated sewage out to sea was finished two years later. The plant provides primary treatment in which solid wastes are separated from the waste water, of up to 25 million gallons of sewage a day.

The effluent has consistently failed tests for acute toxicity. Federal regulations require the sewage to be treated to the more stringent secondary level.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency was working with the IBWC to install more than two dozen open-air treatment ponds near the international plant to bring the sewage to the cleaner level.

The proposed site was just a half-mile from a new residential neighborhood. Residents there feared the ponds would produce odors and mosquitoes.

The Bajagua proposal is being promoted by a binational group of entrepreneurs whose privately financed project would pump the partially treated sewage from the primary plant to ponds in Tijuana for more treatment. Their plan calls for open-air ponds in a rural area on about 200 acres at the city's eastern edge.

Art Letter, a consultant for the Tia Juana Valley County Water District, said he is concerned about how long it will take to get the secondary plant on line. The district supported putting the ponds south of the border.

"We're relatively happy with the progress that has been made," Letter said. "Now we have to look at the secondary plant."

Until a secondary treatment system is in place, the IBWC will look for ways to make the most of the primary plant, said Michael Evans, a division engineer for the commission. A study should be complete by fall.

Evans said IBWC is using the city's Point Loma sewage treatment facility as a model. That plant has an 85 percent removal rate of total suspended solids, he said, while the border plant has a 75 percent rate.