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Disputed border project targets 'sewage tsunami'
By Peter Hecht -- Bee Capitol Bureau
Published 2:15 am PDT Sunday, July 31, 2005

IMPERIAL BEACH - The intruder crosses the border in Smugglers Gulch, a dry, twisting canyon beneath the rippled metal fence separating Mexico and the United States.

Far too many times, surfer and environmentalist Serge Dedina has encountered this unwanted visitor: gurgling, greenish brown water - full of raw sewage, toxins and a "stinky, sweet pungent smell" - flowing from a drainage pipe.

From creeks, gullies and pipes, millions of gallons of untreated sewage from Mexico daily enters the Tijuana River and flows north into California. It is often barely noticed amid the concrete river levees near San Ysidro or in the Tijuana River estuary, a lush plant reserve and haven for migratory birds just before the river empties into Imperial Beach, 1 1/2 miles north of the border.

But when it rains, Tijuana's pollution produces an environmental and public health nightmare for the southernmost part of California. In a particularly wet year, San Diego County officials had to close beaches nearly 200 times since Oct. 1 due to raw sewage from Mexico endangering swimmers and the marine environment.

"When it rains, I call it the sewage tsunami," says Dedina, executive director of a conservation group, Wildcoast. "For 40 square miles, from Imperial Beach to Coronado, there is a brown plume as far as the eye can see."

But now a federal agency is negotiating with private investors for a $200 million project that pledges to clean up sewage pollution resulting from faulty water treatment and a population and industrial development boom in Tijuana, a city with 1.1 million people and a severely overtaxed municipal sewage plant.

The so-called Bajagua project is drawing both praise and condemnation from environmentalists, who are split over whether the private development group in San Diego can succeed where two governments and international negotiators have failed for more than a generation.

On Wednesday, the U.S. International Border and Water Commission, a federal agency that directs water and infrastructure projects along the U.S.-Mexico border, announced that it was commencing negotiations with a San Diego consortium, Bajagua Project LLC, as the "preferred option" for tackling the pollution problem. The IBWC is due to decide on the project by Oct. 1.

The Bajagua group, headed by San Diego land use planner Jim Simmons and Enrique Landa, an architect born in Mexico, has spent $20 million to plan and market the project - which promises to more than double sewage treatment along the Tijuana River.

The investors are seeking to build a sewage plant on 130 acres south of the border to provide secondary level treatment for an existing U.S. sewage facility in San Diego County. They pledged to advance money for the project in exchange for a 20-year operating contract. In a unique twist, the investors also hope to reap additional profit by reselling reclaimed water from treated sewage for Tijuana factory and assembly plants and to ease water shortages south of the border. Both the project and the water sales would have to be approved by Mexican authorities.

"Private sector folks always believe they can do a more cost-effective option, especially with two nations trying to solve an international problem," said Simmons, who has arranged financing and construction for developments ranging from a 4,000-home subdivision in San Diego County to wastewater treatment plants in Mexico City and Sonora.

But a leading opponent of Bajagua, Assemblywoman Lori Saldaña, D-San Diego, said assigning the crucial water treatment project to a profit-driven private consortium - which would then subcontract with engineering firms to build the plant - is too risky.

"My main concern is that the private contractor has bullied the process for five years to get a sole source, no-bid contract," said Saldaña, a former Sierra Club activist long opposed to the project. "And this is a company that has never put a pipe in the ground. They are developers and they are getting a developer's fee."

Bajagua spokesman Craig Benedetto said the development group can only get paid under the proposed contract with the International Boundary and Water Commission if it meets federal Clean Water Act standards for treating and disposing of sewage.

For years, the challenge of cleaning up pollution from the Tijuana River has resulted in financial boondoggles and one environmental mess after another. In 1997, after massive cost overruns, the Boundary and Water Commission opened a $400 million sewage treatment plant near the border in San Diego County to capture and treat effluent flowing in from Mexico.

But that plant, funded by both the United States and Mexico and approved after extensive negotiations between the countries, had a capacity of only 25 million gallons of sewage a day - about half the estimated sewage flow in the Tijuana River. In addition, the plant met only a minimal, primary stage standard for chemical treatment and removing solids from raw sewage.

"The day the plant became operational, it was already obsolete," said Marco Gonzalez, an attorney for the Surfrider Foundation, a politically active group created by surfers to advocate clean water issues.

On clear days, when there is no sewage flow in the Tijuana River and dolphins are splashing off the coast, Imperial Beach is regarded as one California's best "big wave" surfing spots. A deep-water cobblestone reef where the river enters the ocean delivers waves "that break like a freight train," said local surfer Denise Bishop, 35.

But surfers complain of sicknesses, including diarrhea and ear infections, from being out in the water when an unexpected sewage spill occurs.

"It's gross. Suddenly, you're avoiding a brown slick," Bishop said. "You're paddling away, afraid to get water in your month. And it smells so bad."

In 1999, the Surfrider Foundation and the California Regional Water Quality Control Board sued the International Boundary and Water Commission over repeated violations of the federal Clean Water Act from foul-smelling water dumped into the ocean from the agency's San Diego County plant.

The result was a legal settlement calling for extensive ocean water testing and a new law - signed by President Clinton in November 2000 - authorizing the IBWC to negotiate to construct an additional "secondary treatment" sewage plant in Mexico.

The Bajagua proposal would add an additional 34 million gallons of daily sewage treatment and more extensive wastewater purification, using both the Mexican plant and the San Diego facility.

Saldaña, who believes the new plant should be built in the United States, says the 12.5 miles of pipes that will be needed to connect sewage plants in two countries will increase risk of ruptures and spills.

But the Bajagua project is endorsed by many environmentalists, including the Surfrider Foundation. Gonzalez said there are sufficient safeguards and U.S. oversight even though the main treatment facility will be built in Mexico.

"We feel that Bajagua is a project that is workable, absolutely," Gonzalez said. "Some people don't accept that a private company can step in and make money on something that can benefit the environment and the community. But these businessmen intend to get paid and they will only get paid if they meet U.S. standards."

Dedina, who holds a doctorate in geography and wrote his thesis on Tijuana River land use, said any new project needs to capture hundreds of sources of pollution. The contaminated brew includes agricultural waste from farms and horse stables along the river in San Diego County, runoff from densely populated shantytowns and thousands of new factories and assembly plants that have sprung up around Tijuana.

"They have a great sales pitch," Dedina said of the Bajagua proposal. "But we're worried that the U.S. government is going to say, 'Here is Bajagua. It's going to solve the problem.' But the solutions are based on conditions that are 10 years old. Now the problem is twice as bad."