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Has there been a breakthrough in getting the federal government to finally address the Tijuana sewage nightmare that’s flooded South County beaches and estuaries with billions of gallons of untreated waste for more than a decade? That was the intended takeaway, no doubt, of a statement released by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office on Sept. 1 headlined “Federal government commits to fixing Tijuana River sewage cisis in San Diego County.” It declared, “Today, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission committed to commence a major rehabilitation and expansion of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Ysidro.” Newsom hailed this “commitment” as a breakthrough and thanked President Joe Biden.
But the huzzahs and thanks that the governor may have expected from the many San Diegans appalled by years of beach closures and sick surfers, Navy SEALs and Border Patrol agents weren’t forthcoming. Instead, the collective response amounted to “Just great — another fresh set of promises to get things done someday.”
The fundamental problem remains that while many federal and state officials say the right things about the awfulness of the local sewage pollution crisis, they respond to it as essentially a routine issue — one that can be adequately addressed through years of incremental improvements. But to San Diegans who see the federal government going all-out with vast infusions of resources to address hurricane emergencies and calamitous freeway closures, we wonder, where’s the federal urgency on our nightmare? This question has gone unanswered for years.
This critique should not be read as faulting the group of local elected officials who are increasingly outspoken on this issue, in particular Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre and Rep. Scott Peters, D-San Diego. They’re trying and they’re speaking truth to power.
But former Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina, in a Friday interview with an editorial writer, said there is only so much that can be done by area politicians when facing an ossified bureaucratic mindset. “It’s like having a surgical patient come in with all these complications. and [doctors] telling the patient about a long-term health plan, but not addressing what’s killing him,” he said. “No one seems concerned about fixing the problem, they’re more worried about the process.”
This perception is backed up by years of rhetoric from officials — including California Sen. Dianne Feinstein — that imply that those who expect a far more vigorous federal response don’t understand how Washington works. To repeat a point this page has made many times, it’s not that San Diegans don’t understand how Washington works. It’s that if this is how badly Washington works, we reject it.
So let’s strip the issue down to the basics once again. In the short term — how about, well, today? — Biden needs to declare a federal emergency and suspend environmental rules that have the perverse effect of slowing the response to an environmental disaster. Congress must quickly allocate the billions necessary to fund immediate improvements on the U.S. side of the border at the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. And in the medium and long term, the Mexican government must face intense pressure to fix all that’s broken at Tijuana’s sewage facilities.
The days of “always promising us things in the future” — Dedina’s shorthand description of the federal response to San Diego’s nightmare — must come to an end. Please, please, please — no more “commitments” to do the right thing. Instead, it’s time to immediately do the right thing.
