EPA says Mexico still owes $88M for raw Tijuana sewage continuing to spill into San Diego

(The Center Square) — The Environmental Protection Agency reports Mexico still owes the United States $88 million toward the treatment of millions of gallons of raw sewage from Tijuana that continues to flow into San Diego, shutting down beaches and even forcing the relocation of Navy SEAL training.

“Beaches are closed ahead of the 4th of July — not because of weather, but because Mexico is dumping millions of gallons of raw sewage into our waters every day,” said San Diego County Supervisor Jim Desmond, who noted two San Diego beaches were closed for Independence Day, with another eight beaches under bacterial contamination advisory. “We shouldn’t tolerate toxic waste pouring across our border while families are forced to cancel beach plans and communities suffer.”

Billions of gallons of raw sewage from Mexico have flowed into San Diego over the years as Mexican sewage treatment capacity fails to keep up with Tijuana’s rapidly growing population.

While the EPA has sent an agreement to Mexico to address the ongoing sewage crisis, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin noted at a recent press conference that Mexico has not met its financial obligations agreed to with the Biden administration.

“Mexico still needs to obligate $88 million that remains of that agreement that was reached in July of 2022,” said Zeldin at a press conference. “There are a number of projects that are not yet completed.”

“Mexico needs to fulfill its part in cleaning up the contamination that they caused, that their people caused — they cannot view this as a U.S. problem just because their contamination reached U.S. soil,” continued Zeldin.

American taxpayers paid $239 million toward the construction cost of the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in San Diego, which processes Tijuana sewage, with another $550 million approved by a bipartisan coalition in Congress in 2021 and 2023 for repairing and upgrading the facility.

Mexico paid just $17 million toward the plant’s construction, and it pays $2 million toward the plant’s operating costs.

Earlier this year, the Department of Defense found Mexican sewage contamination exceeded state safety levels in over 75% of tested samples and that 39% of recent Navy special forces cases of acute gastrointestinal illness were tied to exposure to these waters.

A new report from the University of California San Diego found Tijuana sewage pollution has spread even to the air along the coast, including one substance that is found to degrade human DNA.

Mexico has recently completed a new sewage plant that should, as the plant becomes operational, reduce sewage flows, while the EPA says the two-year plan to upgrade the IWTP’s treatment capacity will be completed in one hundred days.

“In the meantime, U.S. IBWC has begun expanding the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant’s capacity from 25 million to 35 million gallons per day,” said an EPA spokesperson to The Center Square. “This project was slated to take two years, but we’re going to get it done in 100 days.”