Release of roughly 12M gallons of raw sewage from Mexico into U.S. postponed

Salvador Rivera

SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — Earlier this week, the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) announced a sewage pump station just south of the border in Tijuana was going offline for repairs.

This resulted in an “additional” 10 to 12 million gallons of untreated sewage being released into the U.S. side of the southern border.

The effluent was supposed to be captured by the IBWC’s wastewater treatment plant, located north of the border.

Environmentalists like Bethany Case of the Surfrider Foundation doubt the facility can handle the extra flow since the plant is already working at capacity.

“It can only process 25 million gallons a day and when we go beyond that, the extra effluent is not treated. They can’t do it,” said Case.

She fears most of the waste would end up on the Tijuana River Valley floor and eventually out to sea.

“It’s going to end up in somebody’s property, in our watershed,” she continued. “None of it gets processed, some of it will make it out to the ocean.”

On Tuesday, when Border Report spoke with Case, there was a definite pungent smell in the air.

“It’s the smell of the worst porta-potty ever,” said Case.

Now the IBWC is saying the planned shutdown of the sewage pump station in Tijuana is being postponed.

It says CESPT, Baja California’s Commission for Public Services, has delayed the shutdown while “it continues with preparations for the infrastructure rehab and construction work to be completed during the shutdown.”

IBWC says it will notify the public when CESPT will go forward with the shutdown and the release of the additional untreated sewage into the Tijuana River Valley.