SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Bethany Case described the air in the Tijuana River Valley on Tuesday morning as “the smell of the worst porta-potty ever.”
The odor is from raw sewage flowing into the valley from Mexico, and much more is expected in the coming days.
The International Boundary and Water Commission announced this week that a pump station just south of the border in Tijuana will be shut down for repairs for 10 days, meaning 10 to 12 million gallons of additional untreated raw sewage per day will make its way across the border from Mexico into the agency’s wastewater treatment plant on the U.S. side.
“It hits you in the face,” said Case, a spokeswoman for the Surfrider Foundation, which works to protect and preserve the world’s oceans and beaches.
Case worries most of the effluent will not make it to the IBWC facility but onto the Tijuana River Valley floor because the plant is already operating at capacity.
“It can only process 25 million gallons a day and when we go beyond that, the extra effluent is not treated, they can’t do it,” said Case. “Because we just had a rain event and the ground is saturated all of that is going to end up in somebody’s property, in our watershed, none of it gets processed, some of it will make it out to the ocean.”
Case stated not only is this a smelly problem but a health concern.
“Nationally, this is the biggest health crisis. What gets in the air is making people sick,” she said. “Because we’re at the border and because our area is people who are living near or below the poverty line, we’re ignored and it’s unfair.”
Case said the federal government needs to deliver the money needed to upgrade the wastewater treatment plant and for other sewage mitigation projects on both sides of the border.
Meanwhile, 3,000 miles from the Tijuana River Valley, Democratic Congressman Scott Peters, of San Diego, addressed Congress urging his counterparts to approve the $310 million needed for the repairs.
“The solution is simple … the United States owns and operates a wastewater treatment plant on our side of the border that has not been maintained. It is in desperate need of repair and expansion to handle the flows. President Biden included $310 million in his supplemental funding request that would make those repairs and upgrades possible. This is a small price to pay for the health of our community, our brave service members and our environment.”
Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, also of San Diego, is questioning the IBWC about “unacceptable cost overruns, non-disclosure of deferred maintenance, and the Commission’s unacceptable guesswork in its new demands for hundreds of millions of dollars from Congress and taxpayers.”
Issa is urging the International Wastewater Treatment facility be renovated as soon as possible.
“I enthusiastically support the completion of this vital project – but we can’t ignore our obligations to pursue accountability for taxpayers,” said Issa. “We simply cannot overlook IBWC’s failure to oversee the proper maintenance and management of this facility and its unsupported requests for hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding with no end in sight.”
