McNeece is co-chair of the International Boundary and Water Commission Citizens Forum and a trail guide at Mission Trails Regional Park and lives in La Mesa. Kiy is CEO at the Institute of the Americas, and a member of the International Boundary and Water Commission Citizens Forum and lives in Escondido. Nettleton is the founding co-chair of the Tijuana River Valley Recovery Team and a member of the International Boundary and Water Commission Citizens Forum and lives in University City.

On Sept. 15, 1932, the county of San Diego ordered that all water be boiled in San Ysidro because local supplies were polluted by sewage in the Tijuana River. Ninety-one years later, Tropical Storm Hilary overwhelmed poorly maintained equipment on both sides of the border, spilling 2 billion gallons of sewage into the United States. The storm put an exclamation point on nearly a century of environmental catastrophe.

Really? We’ve got sewage in the river, along the beach and in the air in the United States of America in 2023? Sadly, we do. Many politicians and agencies are lobbying for a solution. Now it’s your turn.

The beaches in the South Bay have been closed for over 700 days in a row due to sewage contamination. That has meant the end of all public events there: no more triathlons, no more junior lifeguard program, no more world-class surfing contest, no more beach days for kids bused in from afar.

The elite Navy SEALs training in the ocean regularly get sick. Scripps researchers have shown that pathogen-laden water gets aerosolized and carriedinland by ocean breezes. Respiratory and gastrointestinal problems rise along with the amount of sewage crossing the border.

A federal agency, the International Boundary and Water Commission, has the task of negotiating with its counterpart agency in Mexico to deal with this problem. That mechanism has been in place since a water treaty was signed in 1944. Since then, 329 “minutes,” as amendments to that treaty are called, have been added to it.

Minute 328, executed last year, allocated $300 million to expand the IBWC’s wastewater treatment plant in San Ysidro and $30 million for repairs across the border. Mexico promised $144 million to repair its sewage system and build a new treatment plant to replace one that hasn’t worked for years.

Extensive studies by the EPA predict that the projects funded by Minute 328 will reduce the tourist season beach impacts by 73 percent to 92 percent.

That’s good news.

But the bad news is that an inspection of the plant in San Ysidro showed that it needs at least $150 million in repairs before the expansion can even be started. Then in August, Tropical Storm Hilary overwhelmed the plant with huge quantities of stormwater, sediment and debris, and caused pumps and valves and other equipment to fail. Now, the estimate to both repair and expand the plant will run $600 million to $900 million . Even before Tropical Storm Hilary, your representatives at every level of government had raised their voices to ask for help. The mayors of 18 San Diego cities, the county Board of Supervisors, state lawmakers, members of Congress, the California Coastal Commission and numerous nonprofit organizations have written letters. Citizens stage demonstrations and make documentaries. Reporters keep us deluged with the news of the continuing catastrophe.

So now it’s your turn. As a special arm of the U.S. Department of State, the International Boundary and Water Commission can only be funded by a request from its commissioner to its parent agency. So while state and local agencies can get money from the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the International Boundary and Water Commission cannot. Nor can it accept donations from philanthropists. It can only get money from Congress.

That’s why this past October, through the efforts of our local representatives, President Joe Biden inserted $310 million in his emergency supplemental request to Congress.

And there it remains. Congress has taken no action. In fact, the $310 million has not been rolled into any formal legislative action. It’s in limbo. We need that money to carry out a treaty obligation that we’ve already committed to. It’s not a partisan issue. It’s a health issue and it’s an economic issue. The ongoing cross-border sewage problem must be solved. Your letters and phone calls can help.

Write or call the House Appropriations Committee chaired by Rep. Kay Granger, R-Texas. The committee and its members are listed on its website.

You can also go to MyReps.datamade.us. It will list all of your representatives from your city, county, state and federal levels.

Tell them that we need that money so that we don’t have millions of gallons of untreated sewage polluting our beaches, our waters, and our air. Please be polite. Anger doesn’t help. Please be civil.

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