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City staff members are set to give an update on the investigation and remediation of residential water bill overcharges at a City Council committee meeting Thursday, three weeks after Mayor Kevin Faulconer announced that an audit of the utility’s billing practices was being fast- tracked. City officials in February discovered problems with some customers’ water bills after hearing weeks of complaints. Some residents saw their charges skyrocket by as much as 400 percent due to what city officials say was one employee’s misreading of meters.

 

In the wake of rising outcry in San Diego of cross-border flows of contaminated water, trash and sediment from Tijuana, Mexico is moving ahead with a series of short-term upgrades to Tijuana’s sewage collection and treatment system aimed at preventing such incidents, and responding with greater speed should they occur. These efforts include upgrading a key piece of infrastructure in Tijuana known as Pump Station CILA that is critical for preventing dry weather flows in the Tijuana River channel from crossing into the United States.

Jim Cuming is a retired farmer whose grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from Ireland. Edward Cuming got 160 acres in Arizona’s Yuma Valley from the federal government. Jim Cuming said the land was as undeveloped as a dry riverbed. In order to survive and develop the farm, his grandfather had to make a living. “This Laguna Dam project opened up. So they moved up to the dam and he worked on the dam there as a carpenter,” he said. That means Cuming’s grandfather helped build the dam that made it possible to irrigate his own farmland.

NBC 7’s Audra Stafford reports on sewage spills along the U.S.-Mexico border over the last 3 years that are the subject of a new lawsuit filed Friday.