January 22, 2024
California’s southernmost surfers are breathing a cautious sigh of relief because Mexico’s military begins the long-awaited reconstruction of a defunct wastewater treatment plant near Tijuana.
The Mexican federal infrastructure project, which broke ground last week, aims to minimize the amounts of raw sewage that has for years been spilling into the Pacific Ocean and contaminating beaches on both sides of the border — sickening thousands of residents and forcing temporary closures at local businesses.
“I can’t surf Imperial Beach. I have to drive like 25 miles each way to go to the cleanest beach,” Paloma Aguirre, mayor of the San Diego County city, told The Hill.
“The reason why I moved to Imperial Beach is — I don’t want to broadcast this — but it has the best waves in all of San Diego,” Aguirre added, noting she hasn’t surfed there since 2021.
Imperial Beach, which sits just a few miles north of the U.S.-Mexico border, has long been plagued by a perennial pollution problem: the flow of untreated effluent from Baja California towns onto the beaches of San Diego County.
Facilitating the flow are both seasonal ocean currents and the Tijuana River Watershed, which originates in the U.S. before heading into Mexico and then returning to California. And climate-driven weather extremes have only made a chronic problem even worse.
While the contamination stems from multiple sources, one of the main culprits is the obsolete San Antonio de los Buenos wastewater treatment plant in the town of Punta Bandera — a Tijuana metropolitan area town about 5 miles south of the border.
The site releases millions of gallons of mostly raw sewage daily into the Pacific Ocean, which carries the waste to California’s nearest beaches, according to The San Diego Union-Tribune.
But vast improvements may be on the horizon after Mexican and U.S. officials announced the start of reconstruction efforts at the site at a groundbreaking ceremony last week.
“We are taking a big step to manage wastewater in Cali-Baja for the well-being of the people of this binational community,” U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar said in a statement following the Jan. 11 event.
Going forward, the Imperial Beach mayor emphasized a need to not only ensure the Mexican plant’s revamp occurs as planned, but also to accelerate related endeavors in the U.S.
She referred to a planned expansion of the IBWC’s South Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, which treats some of Tijuana’s sewage in the U.S., near the border-adjacent San Diego district of San Ysidro.
Congress in 2020 appropriated $300 million toward the renovation, but Aguirre said the facility now requires an added $150 million in repairs. Some sedimentation tanks at the site are so clogged with solids that plants are sprouting out of them, she added.
Hassan Davani, an assistant professor of water resources engineering at San Diego State University, tempered his optimism about the Punta Bandera ground-breaking with the financial straits of the South Bay site.
The future operation of the former “will be nothing but positive for San Diego County residents,” he wrote in an email, noting the facility will help treat some of “the massive wastewater volume.”
“That said, additional funding is still needed to fix and expand the treatment plants on the San Diego County side,” he added.
And those extra funds are “contingent on congressional approval,” Aguirre continued, noting that she will be in Washington, D.C., next week, to advocate for more support.
President Biden this past October requested an additional $310 million for the region in an emergency supplemental bill, but that sum has yet to receive congressional approval.
San Diego County in June issued a proclamation of local emergency due to the contamination, but Aguirre lamented the fact Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) has not done so at the state level. Mayors in the region in September then appealed to the governor for “a coordinated State and Federal Emergency Declaration” to address what they deemed a “dire situation.”
Neswom’s legal affairs secretary, David Sapp, explained the reason why such a declaration could not occur in an October letter to the California Coastal Commission, where Aguirre represents the San Diego Coast. Sapp described the governor’s emergency powers as “inapplicable” to this case, as they only “extend to waiving only state statutes and regulations.”
“A state proclamation of emergency cannot accelerate federal work needed on this federal facility that is in a federally-controlled area on an international border,” the letter stated.
Asked if the governor’s office had any further comment on the issue, Alex Stack, deputy communications director, told The Hill in an email that officials explained the state’s role in the letter and at a related Coastal Commission hearing.
Stack cited multiple examples of Newsom’s efforts to rectify the crisis, such as his role in obtaining a September pledge from the IBWC and Environmental Protection Agency to expedite South Bay’s rehabilitation. Also of note was the governor’s $32.2 million investment in the region for mitigation initiatives like debris removal and coastal cleanup.
“The Newsom Administration has been focused on getting more federal resources to rehabilitate and expand the federal facility, which the Biden-Harris Administration included in emergency supplemental funding,” Stack said, adding that these efforts would bolster the already allocated federal funds.
As far as the Punta Bandera facility is concerned, he stressed that “this is exactly the sort of progress we need to address this federal and international crisis.”
Regardless of the response from the governor’s office, Aguirre said she is nonetheless continuing to push for a state of emergency, which she said is “a huge priority for the Coastal Commission as well.”
Stressing that Imperial Beach has been closed for almost 800 days in a row, she reiterated how residents — primarily people of color — are enduring perpetual unsanitary conditions.
“This is on par, if not worse than Flint, in a lot of ways,” Aguirre said, referring to a 2014 lead contamination crisis in Flint, Mich. “People of Imperial Beach feel like second class citizens in this great state and nation.”
— Updated Jan. 22 at 3:23 p.m.