SAN DIEGO — The United States' Deputy Secretary of State paid a visit to the South Bay today to see and smell first-hand the sewage crisis.
It comes a week after Congress secured $400 million to repair the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant.
The amount of raw sewage flowing from Mexico into the US has overloaded the plant causing millions of gallons to contaminate the ocean, beaches and the air in Imperial Beach and nearby.
“This is a public health problem; it is an economic problem. It is an international problem,” said Richard Verma, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State.
The International Water and Boundary Commission led the tour of the broken plant that is expected to be in compliance in 45 days, which hasn’t happened since March 2022.
This visit comes a week after San Diego’s congressional delegation secured $400 million for the IBWC to repair and double the size of the broken plant.
“This has taken too long to get fixed, but thankfully, we are on a better path today,” said Congressman Scott Peters, (D-50 District.)
While the money won’t divert or treat the 45-60 million gallons of raw sewage flowing from Mexico into the US each day, the IBWC commissioner says the expansion will lower the amount of cross border flow by 90 percent.
“It should be zero,” said Maria-Elena Giner, PhD. “My Mexican counterpart and I are having weekly meetings on this. We’re meeting with the Mexican section. We’re trying to identify those sources. We’re looking at data, and we’re going to do a very quick study to identify those sources.”
Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre applauds the efforts but says the urgency is now.
“The city of Imperial Beach is constantly hearing these anecdotal reports of upper respiratory ailments, gastrointestinal illnesses and poor quality of life, frankly, so the urgency cannot be overstated,” said Aguirre.
I took her demands for a state of emergency declaration to the press conference where Congressman Juan Vargas responded to the question.
“I think this is a state of emergency and it should be declared. I don’t know why it hasn’t,” said Vargas.
Verma added that the Stafford Act doesn’t apply to this plant.
“We are operating with a degree of emergency in our efforts. But the particular federal law at that’s applicable doesn’t actually allow us to declare a state of emergency, but we are operating as if there is a public health emergency,” said Verma.
Work on the design of the plant’s expansion is expected to start next month.
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