The amount of contaminated water mixed with raw sewage flowing across the U.S.-Mexico border into San Diego County will surpass 44 billion gallons by 2023, the most on record in the past quarter-century, according to a new report.
And this year's volumes could break all records if the region experiences more damaging storms.
As of June, the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) had recorded 33.55 billion gallons of contaminated water in the river, which flows into the Tijuana River Valley and into the Pacific Ocean. That's enough to fill more than 50,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools.
The flows carry untreated stormwater, groundwater and sewage to the ocean. Storms over the past two years have brought staggering amounts of that contaminated broth across the border into San Diego County, flooding some South Bay roads where people have had to be rescued, expanding beach closures and carrying sediment and trash into the Tijuana River Valley.
On January 22, a storm filled a 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 presented Wednesday during a meeting of the CILA Citizens Forum, where agency officials provided updates 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 moving pieces that we are monitoring and managing to address these cross-border flows and there is a lot of recovery work to be done right now,” said Commissioner Maria Elena Giner, who heads the U.S. section of the binational agency.
On the U.S. side, the IBWC is focusing on repairing and expanding the South Bay plant. The facility, built in 1997, has not been properly maintained for decades and is not in compliance with its Clean Water Act discharge permit.
But officials said it should be compliant next month. To achieve that, several parts that have been out of service for years are being repaired or replaced.
For example, the plant’s five primary settling tanks, which remove solids from wastewater, had been out of service since March 2023. Two are operating now, and a third is expected to come online next week, said Morgan Rogers, the plant’s area operations manager. A minimum of three are required for its permit, and all five should be operational by September. The facility also has most of its influent pumps up and running again, after Tropical Storm Hilary damaged five of six. It had no spares. These pumps, which cost about $500,000 each, serve as input to the facility’s treatment process. Four new pumps have been ordered, three of which will be spares, Rogers said.
“We were down to one pump because of the excessive flow and the trash and sediment coming through,” he said. “This is critical. We almost shut down the plant.”
The August 2023 storm also destroyed all four pumps at the Hollister Lift Station in an area where several horse properties are located. All of the pumps have been replaced, but the facility remains flawed. Last month, a pressure relief valve on a surge tank was left open, causing hundreds of thousands of gallons of wastewater to spill into the street. The station remains out of service while the agency works to replace the tank.
At the same time, the agency is seeking to double the capacity of the South Bay plant as part of a major plan to reduce cross-border pollution. The IBWC expects to award a construction contract sometime next month. Even with more than $400 million that Congress has allocated to the agency to date, officials estimate that the expansion project is still about $200 million short.
On the southern side of the border, the Mexican military is rebuilding a wastewater treatment plant in Baja California that has been dumping 40 million gallons of sewage a day into the ocean. Mexican officials said the plant will be ready by late September or early October.
“We think it's a pretty aggressive move,” Rogers said. “We hope we're on schedule. We'll see some improvement in ocean water quality in the south.”
Mexico is also working on rehabilitating an international sewer. Although its purpose is to transport wastewater to the South Bay plant, its various fractures and leaks contribute to polluting flows in the Tijuana River. And to allow the pipeline work to proceed, a Mexican pumping station must be shut down, typically resulting in tens of millions of gallons per day of additional wastewater at the South Bay plant or in the Tijuana River channel.
Construction of the pipeline should be completed this summer, officials said.
The juggling act of fixing long-standing flaws and repairing new ones has many South County residents and environmentalists wondering when they will find relief from the pollution, which has compromised public health, the environment and the economy on both sides of the border.
Among them is San Diego Coastkeeper Executive Director Phillip Musegaas, who attended Wednesday's Citizens Forum.
“We are dismayed,” he said. “It is outrageous that we have made so little progress in this period of time despite the huge infusion of federal funding we have seen of over $400 million over the last three years. We need to see more progress.”
Coastkeeper and the Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation are suing the binational agency for water quality permit violations by discharging “pollutants such as fecal bacteria, contaminated sediment, heavy metals and toxic chemicals” into the ocean.
On the federal side, San Diego's congressional delegation is pushing to add more funding from various agencies and departments to cover the costs of the South Bay plant.
Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) is also working to ensure that Border Patrol agents working in polluted waters receive additional hazard pay. And the state Legislature is considering a bill from Sen. Steve Padilla (D-Chula Vista) that would require multinational companies operating in California to reduce their wastewater discharges or face penalties.
Murga writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune
