On a stormy day, 1 billion gallons of water can rage down the river crossing from Tijuana to San Diego.
None of that water is captured for reuse now among the two desert cities it splits, which are regularly prone to drought, because it’s considered polluted by sewage spills on the Mexican side. If successfully recycled, that water could prove to be valuable as the Southwest grows more water-uncertain due to climate change.
We’re letting millions of gallons of sewage-contaminated Tijuana River water go to waste by tossing it to the Pacific Ocean.
That’s the opinion of two competing forces – one from the United States and another from Mexico – that are rethinking the region’s oldest and dirtiest problem, imagining it instead as a moneymaking opportunity.
What’s in the Tijuana River?
Ammonia, a byproduct of raw sewage. Phosphorous, an ingredient in soaps and cleaners that’s banned in the U.S. Metals used in the industrial plating industry. Parasitic worms. And DEHP, a chemical added to plastics.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law last week a bill that will require the state’s Environmental Protection Agency to create a Watershed Action Plan for the Tijuana River Valley.
A report released Thursday by the International Boundary and Water Commission found a significant presence of wastewater in border channels in the Tijuana River Basin impacting San Diego.
In the report, “Binational Water Quality Study of the Tijuana River and Adjacent Canyons and Drains,” scientists from the United States and Mexico collected samples from of seven transboundary channels.
The mayor of Imperial Beach, Calif., and the governor of Baja California are engaged in an ongoing public feud over cross-border sewage spills, which have been a problem for years and resulted in polluting local communities in the United States and making people ill.
Baja California Gov. Jaime Bonilla is involved in a war of words with a California mayor over cleanup efforts along the Tijuana River Valley, which lies between Tijuana and the city of San Diego.
For decades, raw sewage, trash and debris have flowed from south of the border into the U.S.
Most of those materials, especially the raw sewage, end up in the Pacific Ocean, forcing the closure of beaches in cities like Imperial Beach where over the last nine months, beaches have been closed 180 days due to high bacteria levels in the ocean water.
Emphasizing the “unprecedented” bipartisan cooperation between local and state governments, Border Patrol and the International Boundary & Water Commission, EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler announced short-term projects Wednesday to plug the international sewage flow across the U.S.-Mexico border.
In a rare California appearance for President Donald Trump’s appointed Environmental Protection Agency leader, Andrew Wheeler promised the region millions in funding this budget cycle for some quick-er fixes to the age old Tijuana River sewage crisis.
Federal investments in Tijuana River Valley infrastructure to address ongoing problems with sewage runoff could mean an end to beach closures that have plagued the South Bay in recent years, officials announced today in San Diego.
The Water News Network is San Diego County’s source for water news and information.
