Tijuana wants to quench its thirst with recycled water

For more than 15 years, two wastewater treatment plants in eastern Tijuana have presented an opportunity – and a challenge.

The plants, Arturo Herrera and La Morita, raised hopes for a major reuse of wastewater in the city – for irrigation, construction and industrial use. U.S. and Mexican authorities celebrated their openings, saying the effort would benefit both sides of the border.

But without a network of pipes to deliver the plants’ discharges, most of that highly treated wastewater has gone unused. Instead, 7 to 12 million gallons a day are discharged into the Tijuana River channel — a volume that represents about 14 percent of the city’s water use, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

“It’s one of the most depressing things to see how much work it takes to treat that water,” Doug Liden, an environmental engineer for the EPA, said earlier this month at an advisory board meeting of the Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve. “And then you see this beautiful crystal-clear water being dumped into a big cement canal, where it flows six miles to the border, mixed with all kinds of groundwater and raw sewage.”

A proposed solution: With Tijuana facing a growing water shortage, officials with the Baja California water agency, CESPT, are studying a solution: diverting the plants to a site just upstream of the AL Rodriguez Dam, for storage and eventual delivery to a plant that would convert it into drinking water. The project would be one of the first in Mexico to involve what engineers call “indirect potable water reuse.”

Tijuana receives 98 percent of its water supply from the Colorado River. Due to the drought, cuts have been made and the state government is looking for new sources, including the construction of a desalination plant.

“We are in a much more difficult situation than San Diego,” said Hernando Duran, former director of the state water commission and executive director of Tijuana Verde, part of the nonprofit Tijuana Innovadora.

“Since 2022, supply has been lower than demand,” he said.

Duran was head of Tijuana’s state water agency when both plants opened in 2008. The following year, he oversaw an effort to send a small portion of that treated water to Morelos State Park. He has continued to advocate for wastewater reuse. As we sat last week in a small café in the city’s leafy Rio Zone, Duran was adamant. “It’s just unthinkable that today we’re irrigating these green spaces here with water from the Colorado River.”

Part of Minute 328: The state’s current project is part of a series of measures aimed at reducing the flow of sewage-contaminated water from Tijuana to San Diego and eliminating ocean discharges south of the border. Mexico and the United States have pledged $474 million through 2022 for a series of infrastructure projects under the treaty known as Minute 328.

U.S. and Mexican authorities meet regularly and each country has pledged $10 million for the first phase of diverting treated wastewater from the two plants.

“One thing that is really encouraging, and this is the first time I’ve seen this, is that we’re getting a lot of support from Mexico for this project,” Liden, the EPA engineer, told members of the San Diego Regional Quality Control Board earlier this month.

The total cost of the project would be $90 million, Liden said, with another $12 million per year for operations and maintenance. “That all sounds very expensive, but when you compare it to the cost of desalinating the ocean, it actually works out very favorably,” Liden said.

Project Roadmap: Earlier this year, a 62-page report commissioned by the North American Development Bank outlined the steps needed to complete the project, ranging from obtaining permits to expanding treatment facilities, ensuring water quality and conducting public education campaigns.

“The idea was to give more substance to the concept of water reuse,” said Salvador Lopez, the bank’s chief environmental officer. “It provides a roadmap for what actions would need to be taken, what infrastructure would be needed and how much it would cost to remove that water and how much it would cost to remove that water from the river.”

The report proposes to implement the project in two phases: a first phase would consist of upgrades to the treatment plants and the construction of a transport structure to the dam. The second phase would involve the renovation of the drinking water treatment plant.

Ultimately, both countries would be better off, Lopez said. Removing water from the river would be a “direct benefit” for the United States. And for Mexico, it would create a new source of water that would be “much more resilient to drought and climate change than taking water out of the Colorado River altogether,” he said.

New rules for dog lovers crossing the border

On Saturday, August 3, shortly before 10 a.m., a woman drove her Honda SUV with nine caged dogs to the San Ysidro Port Inspection Station, the busiest along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Dana Dallabetto is an American citizen living in Rosarito Beach and the founder of Tragic to Magic, a nonprofit that brings rescued street dogs from Mexico to the United States for adoption. She and two volunteers crossed into San Diego that morning in three vehicles with 27 dogs in their care. It’s something they do every week.

But this was their first attempt under new rules from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bring dogs into the United States. As a low-risk rabies country, authorities required only proof of a dog import form, and for each dog, the volunteers carried envelopes with a receipt for the new form. As usual, they also carried vaccination records, as well as microchip and sterilization certificates.

“I have all the papers, everything,” Dallabetto told the inspector at Booth 20, who quickly ushered her through with her canine passengers, including a poodle-terrier mix named Lilly, a Maltese mix named Pepper and an exuberant terrier mix named Benji.

“Yeah, I was a little concerned, but they didn’t even check all the envelopes,” said volunteer Denise Lopez, who was driving nine dogs in another vehicle. “They asked for the receipts for the forms, and they just checked them, looked at the dogs and let us pass.”

Nearshoring and security: A new report examines the rising cost of crime for transnational corporations operating in Mexico and offers recommendations for how to reverse the trend. “Organized Crime & Violence in Mexico: Considerations for Future Nearshoring Foreign Direct Investment,” was launched this month in San Diego at the Institute of the Americas. Author Cecilia Farfan-Mendez writes that much of the cost of crime for the private sector “arises from trying to protect their companies from violence and insecurity in the country.” The report noted that Baja California was the state with the highest costs in Mexico in 2021. One way to improve safety conditions is through community violence prevention programs, the report said.

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