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Broken sewage infrastructure in Tijuana regularly leaves raw waste flowing north, sickening surfers and swimmers and forcing the closures of San Diego County beaches at least 100 days a year since 2010. It’s an infuriating nightmare that too many local leaders haven’t made enough of a priority, and it’s only getting worse despite threats to public health, tourism and regional security. The federal government’s lack of urgency is all the more galling because dozens of Border Patrol agents and Navy personnel are among those at risk. Yet Presidents Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have all somehow perceived the problem as routine. The biggest federal step to address the problem — the 2019 commitment by the Trump istration to provide up to $300 million to fix the problem — was done not because of a perception of need but for purely political reasons: so the White House could secure local House ’ for the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement.
In 2022, the U.S. government pledged about another $30 million and the Mexican government committed to spending $144 million to fix the problem. But a fix still isn’t on the horizon. Only more sewage is. Federal promises of eventual incremental progress, partly funded by the Mexican government, sound almost empty without signs of improvement. That’s because this is an entirely avoidable disaster. This crisis is not a daunting challenge requiring scientific breakthroughs. A properly funded crash program — one reliant on sewage technology that was common a century ago — would make the problem go away. Similar programs have led to quick fixes of broken roads and bridges for decades. In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, massive damage to Interstate 10 in the Los Angeles area was repaired in 66 days. In 2017, after a huge fire caused a section of Interstate 85 to collapse in Atlanta, the most important repair — reconstructing a bridge — was finished in six weeks. Now, it’s all hands on deck to repair the collapse of Interstate 95 in Philadelphia. Money plus commitment equals quick progress.
It was past time for the region’s leaders to speak as one and demand that President Biden declare a federal emergency in 2022 when new water testing techniques showed pollution at Coronado and Imperial Beach to be far worse than previously thought. Finally, this month, with the problem reaching new extremes — and with federal officials offering a weak goal of stopping half of present sewage spills by the end of 2027 — momentum is growing. First Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre and now the chair and vice chair of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors — Nora Vargas and Terra Lawson-Remer, respectively — have called for an emergency declaration. “If 35 million gallons of sewage were being spilled on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., every day, our government would’ve taken action long ago,” Lawson-Remer wrote. A petition campaign to demonstrate public for this overdue move has begun. It should win the unanimous of the county board next week — and every other local leader who is fed up with this mess.
That list should include San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, who could make this a national news story. Yet when asked by The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board last week, Gloria said he thinks more federal resources are necessary but that the president has been “absolutely phenomenal” addressing this issue. Maybe the mayor doesn’t want to criticize a fellow Democrat on the eve of a presidential election, but Biden needs to hear that he’s not doing enough.
