San Diego County officials are moving forward with an ambitious, locally funded plan to tackle one of Southern California’s most persistent environmental health crises: the decades-long flow of raw sewage from the Tijuana River into South County communities.
The Board of Supervisors is set to vote Tuesday on a proposal to design a new water treatment system that would intercept and clean contaminated river water before it reaches San Diego neighborhoods, beaches and waterways. The plan calls for spending $1.8 million on preliminary engineering work, along with an additional $4 million to address an urgent problem area along Saturn Boulevard, where sewage-tainted water becomes airborne and drifts into nearby communities.
Board Chair Terra Lawson-Remer said the county can no longer wait on federal and international partners to solve a problem that has plagued residents for generations.
“We need to capture all of this waste, all this pollution, and we need to treat it before it gets into our rivers, before it gets near our schools, before it gets to our beaches,” Lawson-Remer said.
The funding push is tied to a countywide ballot measure voters will decide in November. Known as the Protect San Diego County Health and Safety Act, the proposed half-cent sales tax increase could bring in roughly $360 million annually, with about $80 million a year set aside specifically for Tijuana River pollution projects.
County officials estimate that steady stream of tax revenue could support between $700 million and $1 billion in bonds — enough to finance construction of new treatment facilities. Lawson-Remer pointed to previous examples of the county using general obligation bonds to pay for major infrastructure, including airport terminals and road projects, as a model for how the sewage cleanup effort could be financed.
“So the only real question is whether we as a community have the will and the determination to make that same kind of long-term commitment and investment to solving the Tijuana River sewage crisis?” she said.
The pollution problem has plagued Imperial Beach, Coronado and other South County communities for years, forcing repeated beach closures, sickening swimmers and surfers, and even disrupting Navy SEAL training operations near Coronado. Beyond the water itself, the river releases hydrogen sulfide gas and other airborne toxins that have been linked to asthma, headaches and other health problems among residents living nearby. The contaminated water also carries industrial chemicals, pesticides and pharmaceutical residue.
Wastewater treatment plants on both sides of the border are supposed to filter out much of that contamination, but aging infrastructure has repeatedly failed over the past decade, allowing hundreds of millions of gallons of untreated sewage to spill into the river. While recent federal investment — about $650 million — has funded repairs and upgrades to those facilities, significant amounts of pollution still bypass treatment altogether and flow directly into the waterway.
County leaders say a new facility built specifically to divert and treat river water as it crosses the border could close that gap.
“We can’t control what happens across the border, but we can control what we do on our side of it,” Supervisor Paloma Aguirre said.
Natalie Mladenov, an engineering professor at San Diego State University, said the treatment approach could range from advanced purification methods — including reverse osmosis, ultrafiltration and ultraviolet disinfection — capable of removing nearly all contaminants, to a more basic treatment process designed simply to meet federal ocean discharge standards.
Supervisors described the effort as a rare opportunity to deliver a lasting fix on an aggressive timeline, rather than continuing to depend on slow-moving federal and international negotiations.
“We will continue to pressure Washington and Mexico, but we will set the pace,” Aguirre said. “We’re done waiting for someone else’s timeline.”
Original source: CalMatters
