California Democrats invite EPA head to witness cross-border sewage crisis firsthand

California Democrats are urging newly confirmed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin to visit a fraught wastewater treatment plant that has been struggling to contend with a cross-border sewage crisis.

Reps. Scott Peters and Juan Vargas and Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff wrote a letter to Zeldin this week, inviting him to come witness firsthand the public health hazards affecting the southernmost residents of California.

“As you know, decades of underinvestment in cross-border wastewater infrastructure have led to the flow of untreated sewage into San Diego,” the letter stated. “EPA served as an important advocate for this issue in the last Trump Administration and we hope the agency will continue to do so once again.”

The lawmakers were referring to an unrelenting crisis affecting the city of Imperial Beach and its San Diego County neighbors, which have for years been the cross-border recipients of wastewater tainted with chemicals and pathogens. This unfettered flow, which results from inadequate treatment in Mexico, ends up in California via ocean plumes and the Tijuana River Watershed.

Not only has the flow caused widespread water contamination and long-term beach closures, it has also resulted in an airborne public health threat.

As part of a spending package last year, President Biden approved $156 million for the construction budget of the International Boundary and Water Commission, a U.S.-Mexican entity that oversees shared water resources.

The funds were critical to repairing the decrepit South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant, a facility on the U.S. side of the border that treats some of Tijuana’s waste through an international treaty.

Congress in 2020 allocated $300 million toward renovating the plant, but officials maintained that it required $150 million more to function properly. Biden then asked lawmakers last fall to approve an additional $310 million.

While the $156 million did not amount to that $310 million total, it was still a $103 million addition to — or triple the amount of — the $53.03 million sum allocated the previous year.

Leading up to Congress’s passage of the continuing resolution last week, Peters raised concerns about future funding of the facility — stressing that this budget for the remainder of fiscal 2025 would reduce the International Boundary and Water Commission’s construction funds from $156 million to $78 million.

“Years of underfunding got us to the point that our wastewater treatment plant was dilapidated, allowing sewage to flow through our communities and onto our beaches unabated,” Peters said in a statement at the time.

The invitation to Zeldin this week arose after Peters received a letter from Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre about the cross-border sewage San Diego has suffered.

In contacting the EPA, Peters wanted to ensure that the agency’s new leaders fully understand "the scope of this environmental catastrophe and their role in addressing the public health and environmental harm,” according to his office.

“While this wastewater pollution crisis is not new, it has intensified over the past two years,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

“EPA, working with the International Boundary and Water Commission, will play a critical role in addressing these issues and helping the region recover from decades of pollution and environmental degradation,” they added.

Earlier in the month, Zeldin posted on the social platform X that he had received a briefing that “Mexico is dumping large amounts of raw sewage into the Tijuana River, and it’s now seeping into the U.S.”

“This is unacceptable. Mexico MUST honor its commitments to control this pollution and sewage!” Zeldin wrote.

In response to a query from The Hill about the appeal from the California lawmakers, the EPA said the agency “can confirm receipt of the letter and the invitation to visit the South Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant and will respond through appropriate channels.”

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