Every day, millions of gallons of sewage cascade down a canyon into the Pacific Ocean just south of the U.S.-Mexico border. As any San Diego surfer knows, summer swells from the south push the toxic liquid northward.
Meanwhile, millions more gallons of treated and untreated wastewater flow down the Tijuana River and into the sea just north of the border. When wind and currents conspire, the smell of fecal bacteria fouls the picturesque town of Imperial Beach in San Diego County, where Mayor Paloma Aguirre calls the spills “the biggest environmental and public health disaster in the country that no one knows about.”
If this crisis were the result of a hurricane or wildfire rather than decades of neglect, it might warrant an emergency declaration, freeing up recovery funds to address environmental damage, the threat to public health, and the loss of tourism. Instead, beach lovers and politicians are busy improving infrastructure on both sides of the border.
The International Wastewater Treatment Plant, built on the U.S. side of the border to clean Mexican waters, is overworked and underfunded. However, officials say it will be back up and running by August. Mexico’s Baja California state says major repairs to Tijuana’s battered sewage infrastructure will be completed soon, potentially ending the worst of the spills. The state plans to spend $530 million to upgrade the system between 2023 and 2027.
“No, we are just polluting the waters of the United States and of Mexico as well,” said Kurt Honold, former mayor of Tijuana and current Secretary of Economy and Innovation of Baja California. “Our children also want to swim in Rosarito and Tijuana and not get sick.”
Immediately north of the border wall between the two countries that slopes down into the sea, San Diego health officials have effectively closed the beach for more than three years in a row. Further north, near the Imperial Beach Pier, bright yellow signs warning “Keep Out of the Water” have been posted intermittently since 2021, depriving surfers of waves and the spot of crucial summer tourism revenue.
Interviewed on a sun-drenched beach, the bodyboarding mayor of Imperial Beach said that if the crisis were affecting a white, wealthy city, state and federal authorities would have dealt with it long ago.
“We are first and foremost a working-class community; we are first and foremost a brown community. We are a border community,” said Aguirre, an environmentalist before entering politics.
Overwhelmed Infrastructure
The international plant is owned by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC), a treaty-governed body between the United States and Mexico. When operating properly, it treats 25 million gallons per day (1,095 liters per second). However, the facility has been strained under the pressure caused by Tijuana’s infrastructure breakdowns in 2022 and Tropical Storm Hilary a year ago, said Morgan Rogers, area operations manager for the IBWC’s San Diego field office. Wastewater treatment has dropped to 22.7 million gallons per day this year.
“Every gallon we treat here is a gallon that’s not going into the ocean, either down the river or south into Tijuana,” said Rogers, who led Reuters on a recent tour when only one of the plant’s five primary tanks – each outdoors with nearly the capacity of an Olympic-sized swimming pool – was working properly. As he spoke, a large bubble rose to the surface. “Whew, you can see some flow going through here,” Rogers said. “But we’re making good progress.”
In addition to a $30 million upgrade, the plant is about to undergo a $400 million federally funded expansion to double capacity, Rogers said, but will need another $200 million to complete the work.
Tijuana Fights
About 10 kilometers south of the border, a tunnel under the coastal highway is pouring sewage with the fury of a dam that has opened. It is the drain of San Antonio de los Buenos, Tijuana’s damaged wastewater treatment plant. Mexico says a new $33.3 million plant under construction is scheduled to come online on Sept. 30.
The amount of wastewater dumped into the ocean remains controversial. The IBWC estimates that between 35 million and 45 million gallons are dumped daily. Baja California says the plant discharges 23 million gallons per day (1,000 liters per second) of minimally chlorinated wastewater. Mexico’s National Water Commission estimates the discharge at 27 million gallons per day (1,200 liters per second).
Additionally, about 50 million gallons of sewage-contaminated water flows from the Tijuana River into Imperial Beach each day, according to an IBWC river gauge. About half of it is untreated, while the rest is a mix of treated wastewater, groundwater, and drinking water from Tijuana’s leaky pipes, Rogers estimates.
According to Honold, Tijuana’s state-run infrastructure has suffered decades of neglect as the city’s population has grown from 65,000 in 1950 to about two million today. So Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Avila, elected in 2021, made sewer repairs a priority, Honold said. “We feel it,” she added. “We’re going to fix it, and we are fixing it.”
