A new report shows that the amount of wastewater containing raw sewage flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border into San Diego County will exceed 44 billion gallons by 2023, the highest level recorded in the past 25 years.
This year’s rainfall could exceed all records if the region is hit by more damaging storms.
As of June, the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) recorded 33.55 billion gallons of contaminated water in the river, which flows into the Tijuana Valley and the Pacific Ocean. That’s enough water to fill more than 50,000 Olympic swimming pools.
These flows carry stormwater, groundwater and raw sewage to the ocean. Storms over the past few years have carried large amounts of contaminated stew across the border into San Diego County, flooding some South Bay roads and forcing people to be rescued, expanding beach closures and carrying sediment and trash into the Tijuana Valley .
A storm on Jan. 22 filled the North Levee near the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant with more than 1,100 tons of debris. Cleanup work was completed in late May.
The data was released Wednesday at an IBWC Citizen Forum meeting, where agency officials provided an update on wastewater infrastructure projects on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border that are expected to reduce the amount of untreated wastewater in the river.
“There are a lot of dynamics that we are monitoring and managing to address these cross-border movements, and there is a lot of catching up that needs to be done,” said Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner, who heads the U.S. Department of Justice. a department of a national institution.
On the U.S. side, IBWC’s focus is on repairing and expanding the South Bay plant. The facility, built in 1997, had not been properly maintained for decades and was not in compliance with its Clean Water Act discharge permit.
But officials said compliance should be achieved next month. To achieve this, some parts that have been out of service for years will need to be repaired or replaced.
For example, all five of the plant’s primary sedimentation tanks, which remove solids from wastewater, had been out of commission since March 2023. Two are now running and a third is expected to come online next week, said Morgan Rogers, the plant’s area operations Supervisors. At least three are needed to obtain a license, and all five should be operational by September. Most of the facility’s feed pumps are also back in operation after Tropical Storm Hillary damaged five of the six pumps. It has no spare parts. The pumps cost approximately $500,000 each and are the entry point to the facility’s treatment process. Rogers said four new pumps have been ordered, three of which will serve as backup.
“We only had one pump left because of the excess flow, garbage and sediment that was flowing through it,” he said. “This is critical. We almost closed the factory.
The August 2023 storm also destroyed all four pumps at the Hollister Pump Station, which is located in an area with several horse farms. All pumps have been replaced, but the facility is still malfunctioning. Last month, a pressure relief valve on a surge tank opened, causing hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater to spill onto the street. The station remains out of service while the agency works to replace the tanks.
At the same time, the agency is trying to double production capacity at South Bay plants as part of a major plan to reduce cross-border pollution. The IBWC is expected to award the construction contract sometime next month. Although Congress has allocated more than $400 million to the agency so far, officials estimate that the expansion project is still short about $200 million.
South of the border, the Mexican military is rebuilding a crippled sewage treatment plant in Baja California that releases 40 million gallons of wastewater into the ocean every day. Mexican officials said the plant would be ready by the end of September or early October.
“We think this is pretty radical,” Rogers said. “Hopefully we can proceed as planned. We will see improvements in water quality in the southern oceans.
Mexico is also working to repair international gathering pipelines. Although its purpose was to transport wastewater to the South Bay plant, its multiple cracks and leaks led to contamination of the Tijuana River’s water flow. In order for pipeline construction work to continue, a pumping station in Mexico must be shut down, which typically results in tens of millions of gallons of additional wastewater entering the South Bay plant or Tijuana waterways each day.
Officials say construction of the pipeline should be completed by this summer.
The dual act of fixing long-standing failures and fixing new ones has many South County residents and environmentalists questioning when they will be free from pollution that has harmed public health, the environment and the economy on both sides of the border.
Philip Mousegas, executive director of San Diego Coastkeeper, is one of them. He participated in Wednesday’s citizens’ forum.
“We were shocked,” he said. “It’s outrageous that we’ve made so little progress over such a long period of time, even though we’ve received a massive infusion of more than $400 million in federal funding over the past three years. We need to see more progress.
Coastkeeper and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation are suing the binational agency, accusing it of violating water quality permit regulations by discharging “contaminants such as fecal bacteria, contaminated sediment, heavy metals and toxic chemicals” into the ocean.
On the federal front, San Diego’s congressional delegation is pushing for more funding from agencies and departments to cover the costs of the South Bay plant.
Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) is also working to secure hazard pay for Border Patrol agents working in contaminated waters. The state Legislature is considering a bill introduced by Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) that would require multinational companies doing business in California to reduce wastewater discharges or face penalties.
Murga writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
