San Diego, don’t be fooled about Tijuana’s sewage problem

Sewage crossing the border from Tijuana has been a fact of life for too many South Bay residents for too long. Each day, millions of gallons of untreated sewage from Mexico converges on Imperial Beach and other south San Diego communities. There are no easy solutions to this problem — so beware of lawyers who say they’ve suddenly found one.

I work for Veolia North America, the company that operates the U.S. government-owned plant in the South Bay that treats a fraction of Tijuana’s sewage. Our dedicated local employees help protect San Diego’s people and environment there, despite longstanding failures by the U.S. and Mexican governments. I am here to defend our team against false attacks by lawyers who unfairly blame them — and to remind San Diego that the solution is for Mexico to better treat its sewage and for the U.S. to invest in upgrades to the South Bay plant.

The plant was designed to handle up to 25 million gallons each day. Far more drains from Tijuana sewer lines and gullies onto the Pacific Ocean shoreline south of the border or rolls down hillsides into the Tijuana River, without ever entering the South Bay plant. Residents of south San Diego County have lived with the consequences for years.

The U.S. and Mexico tried to improve this situation in 1997 when the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) built the South Bay plant on the American side of the border. But Tijuana’s population has doubled since then, while the U.S. government shortchanged investments in plant repairs and upgrades. Today, Tijuana is the size of Las Vegas and is sending far more sewage to a treatment plant that was designed by the U.S. government to manage far less.

Veolia’s employees have worked tirelessly to keep the plant functioning under challenging conditions outside our control. Mexico routinely overwhelms the plant with far too much sewage, rock, debris and mud that destroys equipment and harms operational performance. Veolia’s requests to make critical repairs and upgrades to the plant went unanswered by prior government leaders.

A permanent fix requires diplomacy and money as well as infrastructure — and San Diego’s residents, elected officials and regional leaders are up to the challenge. Their international pressure convinced Mexico to use its army to rebuild a major Tijuana sewage plant, now expected to reopen in 2025. And San Diego’s congressional delegation scored a big victory in December that fully funds the IBWC’s $600 million plan to rebuild the South Bay plant and double its size by 2029.

Recently, though, opportunistic lawyers who make their money off other people’s problems have told South Bay residents that Veolia is the source of all their problems. It’s factually untrue — expert studies confirm that most of Tijuana’s sewage flowing into the U.S never even enters the South Bay plant — but these lawyers are peddling the delusion that suing Veolia will be an easy fix to their problems. It won’t. And it’s insulting to the local Veolia employees being blamed for a problem they fight every day.

Veolia will fight these lawsuits, because we vigorously and successfully defend our people against lawyers who try to enrich themselves by taking advantage of vulnerable communities. They distort our record in news conferences and articles, like one recently published in this newspaper, but their claims fall short. We are the leading water company in America, and we have earned that position by operating complex infrastructure well under difficult conditions — as we have done in San Diego for almost three decades.

Veolia supports the local and regional leaders who have a track record of delivering real bi-national solutions to this crisis, and they aren’t fooled by flimsy legal claims. We’ll continue fighting these lawsuits, protecting San Diego’s environment, and reminding residents what they already know — anyone promising an easy fix is selling a lie.

Rougé is the CEO of Municipal Water for Veolia North America, which provides water and wastewater services for more than 20 million people across the United States, and lives in New York City.