West Virginia's Republican U.S. senator is holding up a money transfer that would allow federal officials to build the sewage infrastructure to fix San Diego’s cross-border sewage problem.
Sen. Shelley Capito sits on the senate committee that oversees the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
She is the key obstacle to legislation that was widely thought to be a technicality.
When Congress passed the Trump administration's U.S.-Mexico-Canada free trade deal, lawmakers included $300 million to address the sewage issue fouling ocean waters off the southern San Diego coast.
Sewage flows into the United States because Tijuana’s sewage system is not capable of handling the waste produced by the border city’s 2.2 million residents. The tainted flows cross the border and foul the region’s ocean.
Just this month, two broken pipes resulted in hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage tainted water flowing into the United States.
The trade deal gave the money to the EPA, which deals with clean water issues, but does not build infrastructure.
EPA officials are trying to transfer the money to the International Boundary and Water Commission, a federal agency that can build the sewage infrastructure.
“Under this administration, we’re going to move forward,” said Martha Guzman, EPA’s Region 9 administrator.
The transfer was approved twice in the House of Representatives, but has stalled in the Senate because of Capito.
“It’s in the Senate’s hands, and I don’t know why they don’t just push it through quickly,” said Rep. Juan Vargas, D-San Diego, who represents the region along the border. “It’s problematic when she says it has to go through her committee and, when it goes to her committee, she kills it.”
Vargas said the Republican lawmaker did not think the U.S. should be spending money on projects in Mexico, but he calls that short-sighted because Tijuana’s sewage woes affect the U.S. side of the border.
Another San Diego congressman, Rep. Mike Levin, D-Dana Point, got the region’s congressional Democrats to sign a letter asking Capito to change her position.
The lawmakers called the funding critical.
"Since EPA has identified the need for this fund transfer over a year ago, we have been working to secure this language to authorize this transfer. Such a transfer is supported by both agencies and was included in President Biden’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Budget Request," the letter said.
The letter, sent two weeks ago, called the situation frustrating for everyone in the San Diego region affected by the ongoing pollution threat.
Lawmakers say they may try to attach the measure to an omnibus spending bill in an effort to sidestep Capito’s committee. It is not clear if or when that might happen.
In the meantime, the EPA is continuing to work on environmental reviews for a host of projects in the agency's $630 million comprehensive solution.
“Under this administration, we’re going to move forward,” said Martha Guzman, EPA’s Region 9 administrator.
Those projects include expansion of the International Wastewater Treatment Plant just north of the border, improvement of sewage capture systems along the border, and a longer-range plan to capture and treat most of the flows that come through the Tijuana River channel.
The EPA does not need special authority for those environmental reviews.
“We’ve already done it through our existing authorities to continue with the planning, the feasibility planning. We’re going to have that engineering done,” Guzman said.
The region is also getting a helping hand from Mexico.
For the first time, the Mexican government agreed last week to spend over $140 million to fix sewage pipes and pumps in Tijuana.
Mexico also pledged to fix the broken San Antonio de los Buenos sewage plant south of Tijuana.
Hundreds of millions of gallons of raw sewage are dumped into the ocean there, and that pollution frequently drifts north into U.S. waters.negotiated
