U.S. invested in Mexico's environment

Posted 18m ago
By Keith Matheny, USA TODAY

When Mexican officials cut the ribbon on a new wastewater treatment plant in Tijuana in April, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency representatives and San Diego area environmental watchdogs were among those on hand applauding.

The United States is more than an interested observer in its southern neighbor's efforts to clean up the environment. It's an investor and partner in projects along both sides of the more than 2,000-mile border with Mexico.

The EPA has spent $550 million to help construct 88 water and sewer projects. The money comes from the Border Environment Infrastructure Fund, an offshoot of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement.

Projects using U.S. funds in Mexico have also removed tons of hazardous waste from abandoned factory sites and developed air-quality management programs.

The total cost so far is $1.6 billion, half of it spent on the Mexican side of the border, EPA environmental engineer Thomas Konner says.

'Diseases don't recognize borders'

The EPA is targeting the money at Mexican border cities that are experiencing explosive growth, some that have inadequate sewer systems or none at all and some small cities on the U.S. side that bear the brunt of the pollution from Mexico, says Tomas Torres, director of the EPA's San Diego border office.

"We're at the end of the pipe, like it or not," says Ben McCue, a coastal conservation program manager with Wildcoast, a non-profit environmental group working to improve the Pacific coastal region near the border. "It makes more sense to use our tax dollars on that end than here."

Rep. Ciro Rodriguez, a Texas Democrat whose district includes much of the state's western border with Mexico, supports the cross-border projects.

"The community on the other side is usually five to 10 times larger," he says. "That always has an impact on our environment on this side of the border. Tuberculosis and other types of diseases don't recognize borders."

Under a cooperative agreement between the EPA and its Mexican counterpart agency (SEMARNAT, Secretaria de Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales), projects must be within 100 kilometers, about 62 miles, of either side of the border.

Mexico must pay at least half the cost of its projects but usually pays more, says Gilbert Tellez, environmental engineer for EPA border projects in the region that includes Texas and much of the Gulf Coast. Mexican-side projects must have a demonstrable environmental benefit for the U.S. side, Konner says.

Douglas Eberhardt, chief of the infrastructure office for the EPA's western region, says that when he started working on Mexican border projects in 1989, "you had 13 million gallons of raw sewage a day coming across the border in the Tijuana River."

Improving quality of life

Border Patrol agents in 1994 sued the U.S. government to receive hazard pay for working along the polluted Tijuana and New rivers flowing across the border into the United States. The officers settled the case in 2005 for $15 million and were supplied with protective gear for use when working near the rivers, says their attorney, Gregory McGillivary.

The EPA has invested $42 million in wastewater collection and treatment projects in Tijuana and nearby Rosarito, Mexico, since 1998 — about 40% of the projects' $98 million cost. That doubled, to 80%, the share of homes in the Tijuana area with sewer service, the EPA's Douglas Liden says.

The EPA also contributed $41 million for planning and construction of two large wastewater treatment projects in Mexicali that totaled more than $98 million in construction costs, Liden says.

The two projects together remove more than 40 million gallons a day of untreated sewage from the New River, he says.

Environmental problems persist, he says, but the river and Salton Sea's environmental conditions have "drastically improved," and public health risks have been reduced.

The program isn't without problems. A Government Accountability Office report last year found that projects had been less effective than they should have been because government agencies involved — including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Army Corps of Engineers and Housing and Urban Development — failed to assess needs adequately and coordinate efforts.

Annual funding for the EPA border projects has dropped from a high of about $100 million several years ago to $17 million this fiscal year.

McCue would like to see the program expanded.

"I think it's more difficult for people who aren't local, who can't see the benefits and say, 'Why are we spending U.S. taxpayer dollars in Mexico?' " he says. "But it really comes down to the most efficient and effective way to spend that money. You can get more done by working collaboratively in Mexico rather than unilaterally here in the U.S."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2010 ... tion_N.htm