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Column: Tijuana sewage spills: generations of frustration

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In the early 1960s, sewage being dumped by Tijuana was polluting the beaches and waters off Imperial Beach.

At the time, the remedy — of sorts — was to put chlorine in the wastewater before it was sent into the international outfall. Sometimes Mexican officials balked at spending tens of thousands of dollars to do that.

Dr. J. B. Askew, San Diego County’s health officer at the time, said he couldn’t stop people from flushing their toilets in Mexico, but he could declare a public health problem and keep San Diegans away from — or crossing — the border.

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That threat got people’s attention.

Not wanting to lose their American customers, proprietors of bars, restaurants and other businesses along Avenida Revolución helped raised money to get the chlorine.

Brian Bilbray tells that story and suggests there should be a modern-day version aimed at getting Mexico to take stronger action to stop the sewage flows that continue to pollute the Tijuana River and the ocean beyond, regularly closing beaches in his town and sometimes up the Silver Strand to Coronado.

The former Imperial Beach mayor, county supervisor and congressman said shutting down border crossings, at least partially, whenever raw sewage is discharged from Tijuana would get people’s attention.

“I know that sounds radical,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be radical in any other application.”

He said if General Motors or Union Carbide released such pollution on a river, the ocean and nearby communities, “You’d have, environmentalists, everybody saying ‘shut their doors!’”

Perhaps. But those two corporations have staying power. So does Tijuana sewage. Cross-border pollution has plagued the region since at least the 1930s. There’s been moments of progress, and big spending, but the problem persists.

While the sewage flows aren’t daily as they once were, they are maddeningly regular.

“We’ve had over 350 spills over the last three years,” Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina told KUSI following a spill just over a week ago. “That’s one every three days.”

Dedina and others have suggested a diversion system could put sewage in a holding area until it could be put into the treatment system when capacity is freed up. A similar, temporary pond system was built a few decades ago.

Bilbray acknowledges his border shutdown idea is a desperate one and, if it ever happened, would result in many complications. The blowback wouldn’t be just from Mexico but, perhaps even more so, from business interests north of the border.

But nothing seems to be working these days. Over the decades, Bilbray has been party to efforts — some successful, some not — to move solutions forward.

Bilbray’s notion of restricting border crossings is born out of the same frustration he felt nearly 40 years ago.

He’s famously known for commandeering a skip loader and damming the polluted river when he was mayor in 1980. The river mouth wasn’t blocked for long, but he got people’s attention.

A real solution, he said, requires a coordinated local, state and federal sustained push, which has happened before and led to the building of sewage treatment facilities.

“There was real bipartisan effort,” said Bilbray, a Republican.

He noted that decades ago former Rep. Jim Bates, a Democrat, worked with then-Rep. Duncan Hunter (father of the current Republican congressman). And Rep. Bilbray worked with then-Rep. Bob Filner, a Democrat.

Assemblyman and eventual state Sen. Steve Peace, another Democrat, represented the South Bay and also helped bring attention and support for solutions at the state and federal level.

There are some prickly characters in that crowd, but they managed to work together.

“There was also an ‘us versus them’ mentality in the South Bay,” Peace said, reflecting the thinking that the area was an afterthought among regional powers.

They convinced CBS’ “60 Minutes” to do an exposé on border pollution in Imperial and San Diego counties, which gave the issue national exposure.

Consecutive presidential administrations were lobbied. In 1994, Vice President Al Gore attended the groundbreaking for a border treatment plant. Filner presented him with red boxing gloves for “delivering a knockout blow to Tijuana sewage in this river valley.”

But it didn’t go down for the count.

Sadly, that fix — considered by some as a Band-Aid at the time — are overwhelmed by a growing Tijuana and its deteriorating infrastructure. Much of the city isn’t even hooked up to the existing sewer system.

Any solution requires heavy U.S. involvement and likely funding — or it won’t get done. The “binational” plant that treats sewage from Mexico is on U.S. soil.

“We had to do something ourselves,” Peace said, adding that while they couldn’t count on Mexico to solve the problem, there was good cooperation and communication south of the border.

Besides, he said, “The reality is, we’re downhill.”

But putting together a unified political front isn’t easy. Even decades ago, the Sierra Club sued in an attempt to block the treatment plant, contending there were more environmentally friendly ways to address the problem.

Later, a privately operated treatment project in Mexico known as Bajagua was years in the planning, but eventually collapsed in 2008 after missed deadlines and questions about whether it would live up to its billing — and, significantly, whether it advanced because of backroom dealings.

Dedina, years before he was mayor, was among the opponents. Bilbray and others backed the plan.

While critical of Mexico, local officials also vent at the U.S. federal government for not addressing the problem. A handful of local agencies are planning to sue the U.S. side of the International Boundary and Water Commission.

“I think what’s happening is they no longer care,” Dedina said. “There’s no accountability structure so they can do it and know they can get away with it.”

The growing list of those lining up behind the planned lawsuit includes Imperial Beach, city of San Diego, San Diego County and the Port of San Diego. Coronado has offered to help finance the lawsuit. and the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board has discussed whether to join.

As the legal strategy moves ahead, Bilbray suggests the Trump administration, in essence, should climb on its own skip loader by using the ports of entry to crank up pressure on Mexico.

“You’ve got a wild card in the White House,” Bilbray said. “And that wild card could do something that is a long time coming.”

And that wild card has demonstrated he’s not concerned about any bad PR from his border policies.

Tweet of the Week

Goes to Union-Tribune Ideas (@sdutIdeas) about the latest school shooting.

“Today, we’re at a loss for words.”

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