Will Planned Upgrades To Tijuana Water Treatment Plant Be Enough To Stop Sewage Spills?

New upgrades to a sewage plant Baja may help you met this Bill said foul beaches and waters off the coast of San Diego. Officials said they are going ahead with the $25 million upgrade with the treatment pounds. The news comes after a season of heavy rains brought streams of raw sewage across the border. They attended a form and welcome to the program To get a clear idea of what the problem has been with a sewage system in Tijuana and how they intend to fix it. There is a number of issues. First you have aging infrastructure in the city of San Diego that needs to be replaced combined with massive rain letting him like this winter caused some of those pipes to literally wash away and break down and that the pipes the water was not rerouted as it is normally done and basically discharged into the Tijuana River that caused a massive tsunami like sewage will in February. Spills along the canyons and on the border in Tijuana throughout the spring and recently. What you have the second part of that problem is you have sewage that is discharged down to Rosarito Beach and then you have the area of San Antonio suis -- sewer discharge treatment plan and that is 40 million gallons a day of sewage on the beach that can be pushed North as far as Coronado. Can you talk about some of the specific components of this plan to There is a fire with phase plan that Baja California has released. The most important part of the plan that we are working with our congressional delegation to get funding for the EPA border infrastructure program is to replace and improve agent and the structure and the Tijuana River Valley. So we don't have these continual breakdowns. I think there are five main types they are talking about replacing but additionally what they are talking about doing is adding another level of treatment to the plant six miles south of the border. Instead of discharging the water or waste and women in water quality of the way northward so the big part of this plan gosh the reality is they are, pumping water from the Colorado River which is a super fragile water body pump it up hill which cost them $5 million appear that the burn heavy fuel oil which causes use -- huge amounts of air pollution and emissions nobody can afford to do that anymore in San Diego or Tijuana so the plan envisions doing a lot more agriculture and industrial provisions. This is expected to cost $25 million at the Environmental Protection Agency estimate the Tijuana sewage system meets $400 million in improvements. How much of a difference could this rather small changes make in preventing cross-border sewage spills. That is with five of the most problematic collective parts that need to be improved. If you look at the sewage system there are specific areas that always cause the breakdowns. Number two fixing the issues at the plant that is just south of the border in the beach. That plan has a significant impact on the beach when we have a soft wind and south swell. It is very well spent. We need everything possible. And everything helps. What was your take away the sewage upgrades. I need to be optimistic because the problems have been so bad it affected everyone from border patrol agents to been a $1 billion special warfare campus. Coronado has had record beach closures. I need to be optimistic because it is not just in San Diego but there is literally no water in and Sonata. There's a massive water crisis so this is one part of that and people are pretty upset about that. There's a reason people don't come to the meeting on Monday. What are we doing on this side of the border to possibly mitigate any contamination from future spills there may be. For a long time agencies like the regional water board and folks in the environmental sector the international boundary and water commission own slant right next to the border and the argument is the need to put some ponds and catch the trash but also catch the renegades sewage flows and they can put the water back into the sewage system. There is a constant stream of victims and flows coming into the canyons and they have been weighing and the White House. The private sector and public sector like the public -- like the Surfrider foundation for this is -- When the the new upgrades I'm having a meeting with agency officials in Tijuana and the international water commission tomorrow so I will get more details. That is good news I think they have to do that because there are some pretty serious want. They will be pushing on the side of the water board and the commission that will move forward putting a proposal with the budget and the feasibility study.'s Clean Water Act and California the bottom line is the reason -- regional. They have not been doing their job and enforcing the law to make sure that it doesn't read the be -- reach the beaches. The County of San Diego are all looking in to sleep -- legal options and they are not enforcing the law. We cannot continue to have it on the side of the border so I hold the water board a lot more responsible for letting this go for so long and not doing it. Finally they made a lot of noise which they did I've been speaking with searched the the net.