A critical area of Tijuana’s wastewater system, which repeatedly fails, sending millions of gallons of untreated sewage a day into the binational Tijuana River, is being upgraded.
On Monday, officials with Mexico and U.S. governments and the North American Development Bank (NADBank) broke ground on a project to improve the PB1A and PB1B lift stations.
The pumps move wastewater from a larger pump station in Tijuana, called PBCILA, across the U.S.-Mexico border to the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant that’s located in the Tijuana River Valley. When they fail, including because of power outages, sewage flows tend to bypass a drain at the border wall and reach the Tijuana River. Sewage pollution has led to beach closures on both sides of the border and people reporting health symptoms, such as headaches, nausea and respiratory problems.
Last month, one of the pump stations stopped operating, sending more than 25,000 gallons of untreated wastewater over the border.
“Works such as these help accommodate overflows, prevent untreated discharges, and protect the Tijuana River,” John Beckham, the managing director of NADBank, said in Spanish during the groundbreaking ceremony.
At the groundbreaking, officials said they are also beginning work on a project, dubbed Tijuana River Gates, to replace 35,700 feet of deteriorated wastewater pipes along several sections of the city’s wastewater collection system that repeatedly leak into the Tijuana River.
NADBank, which is financing the projects, said Mexico and the U.S. are splitting costs for the $8.4 million river gates project and that the pumps project is being paid for in part by a $13.4 million grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
According to the EPA, the projects will prevent five million gallons per day of sewage from entering the river. These are among the two dozen projects in a memorandum of understanding between Mexico and the U.S., which both nations have committed to completing in the coming years to end the decades-long sewage crisis.
“Projects such as this one demonstrate our shared objective — to put citizens on both sides of the border first,” Baja California Gov. Marina del Pilar Ávila Olmeda said in a statement. “Today, we are taking a decisive step forward in modernizing the infrastructure that underpins the responsible management of wastewater in our state, as well as in the United States.”
