The crews carry out repairs to a system of pipes intended to send wastewater flows from the Tijuana, Mexico, the treatment plants on both sides of the American-Mexico border reported a break that began on the night of March 8, which sent millions of waste water gallons to the Tijuana river valley and, eventually, to the Pacific part of the Pacific part of border.
The spill occurred after a few days of rain was the dilapidated water management system in the river valley on both sides of the border. The flow led to an accumulation of remains that blocked one of the junction boxes of the South Bay Wastewater Treatment plant, which caused the minimum flows to reach the southern floor of San Diego county.
“We’re working closely [Mexican authorities] To ensure that the right flows reach SBIWTP to maintain our biological treatment process, “said Dr. Maria-Elena Giner, a curator of the US section of the Bounary’s International Water Commission in a statement, the IBWC is a federal agency created by treaties to manage water problems between the two nations throughout the Southern Texas border in California.
The North -American IBWC section said that Mexican authorities are waiting for a break in the rain so that their staff can repair the Sanchez Taboada collector, a part of the old international collector system. This collapsed pipeline will give rise to a download of approximately 3.4 million daily gallons on the Tijuana River for about six weeks, according to the statement. The North -American IBWC section and the United States Environmental Protection Agency continue to make daily calls to Mexico to obtain updates to the international collector project.
The international collector is a mostly new canoner to deliver raw waste water to wastewater treatment plants in both the United States and Mexico. The old international collector system had pipes that went up in several sections and were prone to breaking due to gravity, as well as being older and in poor condition. Currently, Mexican construction crews are installing a Bypass to prevent wastewater from escaping while the new collector is completed and laid online.
Giner’s statement also said that Mexico continues to seek the source of wastewater flows originally escaped from the old international collector pipe system that was rehabilitated and partially replaced. “They assure us that they have developed a contingency plan to divert these flows during the rehabilitation project.”
EPA administrator Lee Zeldin published on March 8 on March 8: “He informed me that Mexico is sending large amounts of raw waste to the Tijuana River, and is now filtered in the United States that this is unacceptable. Mexico must honor his commitments to control this pollution and wastewater,” he wrote.
Giner said that he was encouraged by the zeal declaration and the mayor of the Imperial Beach, California, Paloma Aguirre, had written a letter to Zeldin on March 3, asking for a new review of the situation on the border, estimating that 31 billion gallons of raw waste water, contaminated in rainwater and garbage, had entered the Tijuana river through the river.
“I am happy to have acknowledged that this is a crisis,” Aguirre said in a statement. The IBWC -American section recently agreed to more evidence for the affected communities and Veolia Water North America, which operates the southern bay plant for the commission, has faced demands for residents on failed air and closed beaches. Veolia’s staff helped the Mexican authorities with emergency work at the broken international collectors of the last week.
The project of rehabilitation and replacement of international collectors in progress includes the renunciation and replacement of pipe sections, increasing the reliability of the collector at the same time reduces the leaks. Giner’s statement said that the work had to be completed in one phase, which would have sent approximately 25-30 million gallons daily to the wastewater on the Tijuana river for about three or four weeks.
Mexico agreed to change the plans after the United States section of the IBWC, EPA and the United States Department, urged it to implement a Bypass solution while making final connections. At the end, the bypass should prevent more than half a million gallons of wastewater from reaching the river when the project ends at the end of this year.
The new international collector is expected to have the ability to bring up to 60 million GPD of wastewater and sludge to the international water water plant in South Bay and the San Antonio de los Buenos plant on the Mexican side of the border, giving more resilience to the wastewater infrastructure in Tijuana and reducing transfoundist flows.
Giner has been praised by officials on the two parties of the border for interpreting actions and transparency to deal with the ongoing crisis for the last four years, but she and the Trump Inter-Administration have not yet agreed to expand their term as engineering head of the American section of the Federal Agency.
