Bajaboy
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Development boom on Gold Coast forces scrutiny of sewage plight
Development boom on Gold Coast forces scrutiny of sewage plight
By Sandra Dibble
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/mexico/tijuana/20071021-9...
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
October 21, 2007
JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune
Treated with chlorine to kill bacteria, a stream from Tijuana's overburdened Punta Bandera wastewater treatment plant flows into the ocean. New plants
are expected to relieve the city's treatment system. But a development boom along the Tijuana-Ensenada corridor (below) has forced renewed scrutiny of
coastal discharges.
Donald Trump's portrait graces a billboard advertising condos for sale along a strip of land fronting the Pacific Ocean five miles south of the
Mexican border.
What the sign doesn't say is that the luxury condo complex under construction is a few hundred feet from Punta Bandera, Tijuana's state-run sewage
treatment plant.
And just over a mile and a half down the road from the future Trump resort, the plant discharges into Los Buenos Creek, sending a sediment-laden
stream with whitish bubbles down to the beach and into the surf at the rate of about 30 million gallons a day. It's a brew of 25 million gallons of
treated effluent and more than 5 million untreated, blended together and mixed with chlorine to kill bacteria.
While the Baja California coastal region's rapid buildup has brought billions of dollars in private investment, it has also left cash-strapped
governments scrambling to meet the infrastructure needs of these flourishing new communities. The development, fueled in large part by the demand from
U.S. baby boomers, is drawing increased scrutiny to coastal water quality.
“You don't overbuild and not take care of the infrastructure,” said Nancy Smith, 71, a U.S. citizen and grandmother who has watched the coastline
change during three decades of living in northern Rosarito Beach.
JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune
Faced with a rapidly growing population and limited funding, the state of Baja California has made substantial progress in sewage collection and
treatment in recent years in the Tijuana-Rosarito Beach region. More than 200,000 homes that had been unconnected now have sewer service.
But critics say coastal discharges, some of them clandestine, continue to violate Mexico's environmental standards. Monitoring of discharges is spotty
at best, and many test results for water quality are not made public, so the dimension of the problem is difficult to quantify.
Environmental groups on both sides of the border are pressing for closer scrutiny. U.S. and Mexican developers also have been asking for improved
planning, roads and water delivery and expanded sewage treatment capacity along the 80-mile “Gold Coast” from Tijuana to Ensenada. State planners say
they have some solutions in mind – they just need to find the money.
Tijuana as a model
Though overburdened, Tijuana claims one of the better wastewater systems in Mexico, where only 36 percent of collected sewage receives treatment.
“I see Tijuana as a model in many ways,” said José Luis Castro, who studies urban development and water management along the border at the Colegio de
la Frontera Norte, a think tank. He said that in the face of rapid population growth, the State Public Service Commission for Tijuana and Rosarito
Beach has been quick to increase service.
TIJUANA SEWAGE: BY THE NUMBERS
90: Percentage of collected sewage that is treated in Tijuana
200,000: Number of previously unconnected homes added to the Tijuana system since 2001
25 million: Gallons of wastewater treated daily at Punta Bandera, Tijuana's largest plant, and released into the ocean
5 million: Gallons of untreated sewage released daily at Punta Bandera after it is mixed with the treated sewage and chlorine
SOURCE: Baja California state government
In Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, state officials report that 80 percent of wastewater is collected in the service area; of that, 90 percent is treated.
Wastewater that is captured but not treated is piped to Punta Bandera, where it is released into the waves.
But the collection figures don't include many outlying areas and unauthorized neighborhoods that spring up without service. With nearly 1.5 million
people living in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach and annual growth rates of 4 percent to 5 percent, the cities' constant expansion often forces the state
sewage system to play catch-up.
On the coast, the fault is partly that of developers who have failed to live up to their pledges to build and maintain private sewage systems. More
than two miles down the coast from Punta Bandera, about 100 residents of Baja Malibu, many of them U.S. retirees, have been living for decades without
a treatment plant because the developer who promised them one never followed through, and is now long gone.
The state bills residents for water service, which in most cases includes sewage treatment, but the community has yet to be connected to the public
utility.
Don Raidy, a retired San Diego restaurateur who purchased a lot in Baja Malibu in 1969, said residents have spent $40,000 over the past seven years on
a pumping system that keeps the sewage off their streets.
The sewage is sent up a hill and across the highway to an uncovered holding tank hidden by dense foliage. The discharge isn't treated and is simply
released into the surrounding greenery.
The public service commission says it offered to build and finance a public plant, but residents on the other side of the highway objected, and Raidy
and his neighbors have continued relying on their private pumping system.
“We're almost ready to quit taking care of it, because we can't afford it,” Raidy said.
A study by the Baja California Tourism Secretariat calculates that 22,000 new housing units will be built along the coast in the next five years,
representing an investment of $5 billion. Prices range from $150,000 to nearly $1 million.
Developers are pressing for a new master plan addressing water needs, sewage capacity and roads in the region. Baja California authorities are trying
to get developers to help pay for some of the public improvements.
Many in the new wave of developers, including New Yorker Donald Trump, say they'll avoid contributing to coastal contamination with on-site sewage
treatment plants that would produce reclaimed water for irrigation. But state officials say these are temporary solutions, and they create a
regulatory nightmare for short-staffed agencies.
Private plants that have existed for years “in many cases . . . are not in compliance,” said Ismael Grijalva, head of the Baja California peninsula
office of Mexico's National Water Commission, charged with licensing private plants and monitoring their discharge. “There are others who discharge
secretly, or who only ask us for permission once we've discovered them.”
Grijalva said his agency doesn't have the personnel for anything more than random inspections.
Some of the most frequent testing of Tijuana's coastal water quality is conducted by San Diego's Metropolitan Wastewater Department, which monitors
three coastal points on behalf of the International Boundary and Water Commission, an agency that operates projects on the border on behalf of the
United States and Mexico.
The southernmost point, adjacent to Baja Malibu, showed sporadic spikes in fecal coliform and total coliform concentrations, both indicators of
contamination, between January and June of this year. On 12 out of 29 survey days during the six-month period, concentrations were above the norm for
one or both measures, posing a risk of illness to swimmers and others who go into the ocean.
Spending on sewage
The rapid coastal development creates “a great opportunity for developers to group together, whether putting in some money or forcing the government
to take action,” said Oscar Romo, coastal training director at the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve in Imperial Beach, who has
studied Tijuana sewage issues for close to three decades.
JIM BAIRD / Union-Tribune
Manuel Cisneros maintains the pump at Baja Malibu, ensuring it keeps piping wastewater away from the beachside enclave. Residents say a developer
promised to build them a treatment system more than 30 years ago - but never did.
TERRY RODGERS / Union-Tribune
Benigno Medina of the State Public Service Commission for Tijuana and Tecate, led a tour of the new Monte de los Olivos treatment plant in eastern
Tijuana. It is one of three plants coming online next year, and the state hopes to sell their reclaimed water to industries.
Baja California officials say they have devoted large amounts of resources to collection and treatment, pointing to more than 200,000 previously
unserved homes in the Tijuana region that have been connected to the public utility since 2001.
The public services commission has worked closely with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which has allocated $39 million in the past decade
for Tijuana sewage projects through its Border Infrastructure Program. Those projects include developing a master plan, rehabilitating aging water
lines and building a new pump station and major transmission line.
Three new sewage treatment plants expected to open next year will have a combined capacity of 25 million gallons a day and will treat wastewater to a
level that far exceeds Mexican standards. Funded through low-interest loans from Japan and Mexico's federal government, they are expected to all but
eliminate the release of untreated sewage at Punta Bandera.
To reduce illicit coastal discharges, Baja California's government is planning to shut down more than a dozen private plants near the coast, including
Baja Malibu's private pumping system. The communities would be connected to a proposed 17-mile, $15 million pipeline that would send the sewage to a
new state treatment plant in northern Rosarito Beach.
At Punta Bandera, the commission is proposing an underwater pipe, known as an ocean outfall, to carry the government sewage plant's discharge farther
into the ocean and away from the beach.
“There's a lot of things that we're doing,” said Toribio Cueva López, the state's point man on sewage treatment in Tijuana and Rosarito Beach. “But
the limiting factor is money.”
Cross-border flow
The Tijuana sewage issue has long been a binational issue, involving a range of U.S. and Mexican players.
Officials of the Tijuana River estuary have been working with Mexican agencies for years as they research and monitor water quality on both sides of
the border. The Imperial Beach-based environmental group Wildcoast has been focusing on Tijuana sewage in its coastal cleanup campaign, urging a
comprehensive binational solution.
Academic groups are also getting involved. UCSD's Scripps Institution of Oceanography is studying the movement of plumes created by Punta Bandera's
coastal discharge as well as those sent into the ocean north of the border from the South Bay and Point Loma outfalls.
“The ocean doesn't know there's a fence there,” oceanographer Eric Terrill said.
Binational efforts have been key to eliminating flows of sewage across the border in dry weather, though sewage-contaminated runoff continues in rainy
weather, contaminating San Diego beaches.
The 1994 opening of the International Wastewater Treatment plant in San Ysidro played a key role in eliminating the dry weather flows, treating 25
million gallons of Tijuana sewage daily.
But the treatment there, called advanced primary, falls short of U.S. Clean Water Act standards, and a U.S. federal judge has ordered the
International Boundary and Water Commission, which operates the plant, to upgrade treatment by September 2008. A proposed private solution by a U.S.
company, Bajagua LLC, has caused bitter debate in San Diego County. The San Marcos-based company wants to build a plant in Tijuana to give advanced
treatment to the effluent from the international treatment plant, as well treat an additional 34 million gallons of Tijuana sewage each day.
Bajagua's opponents say it is costly and impractical, and criticize the no-bid contract won by the company from the U.S. government to build the
plant.
South of the border, Bajagua supporters say the project – free of cost to Mexico – could give the state of Baja California breathing room as it
grapples with growth. A private plant would be welcome, state officials say, provided it meets their requirements.
But “we just can't rely on the internal politics of the United States,” said Arturo Espinoza, Baja California's secretary of infrastructure, adding
that his government is moving ahead with its own plans.
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