SAN DIEGO — Damaged equipment has been taken offline at the International Wastewater Treatment Plant due to excessive amounts of sewage coming from Mexico.
Since August, the facility has been inundated with an extra 5 million gallons of wastewater per day due to a pipeline break south of the border.
Normally, the treatment plant is equipped to process 25 million gallons per day, but the excess flows have increased that number to 30 million gallons per day, causing damage to the equipment.
“That extra flow causes extra wear and tear on the plant, bringing with the wastewater trash and sediments and that goes through our pumps. It’s damaged some of the equipment, it’s clogged the tanks, so we’ve had to take them out of service,” said Morgan Rogers, area operations manager for the San Diego field office of the International Boundary and Water Commission.
“We’re still treating the same amount of flow as we did before, we just aren’t able to remove some of the solids as much as we’d like to,” said Rogers.
All five tanks in the primary treatment area, which is where solids are skimmed out initially, have been taken offline to be cleaned.
Other areas of the facility are still treating the wastewater, namely the secondary treatment area, where bacteria is used to treat it by eating the organics and some of the dissolved solids.
Ultimately, the 30 million gallons of treated wastewater are discharged three-and-a-half miles off the coast every day via an underwater pipeline.
Yellow signs at the beach warning of sewage contamination were posted 249 days last year in Imperial Beach.
“It’s just another insult to injury,” said Serge Dedina, Executive Director at Wildcoast.
“They need to hammer and pressure Mexico to fix its sewer system, to fix these broken pipes, to spend a lot more effort to upgrade the sewer system in Tijuana, so we’re not dealing with these issues because it’s killing beaches in IB and Coronado," said Dedina.
Mike Harris, who has lived in Imperial Beach on-and-off for 60 years, is frustrated too.
“It’s irritating is what it is. I don’t even let my dog walk on the beach right now, I don’t want her to catch something,” said Harris.
Potential effects to ocean quality along South Bay shorelines are still being assessed.
“This is traumatizing for IB, our whole community is at the beach, the same thing for Coronado, the Silver Strand is closed all the time,” said Dedina. “Our lifeguards can’t go in the water, so if they rescue somebody who goes in the water, they could get sick.”
One of the tanks will be back online in about a week and all five should be operational by June, as authorities work with Mexico to fix the broken sewer pipeline.
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