San Diego – the United States and Mexico have signed an agreement describing specific steps and a new calendar to clean the long-standing problem of the Tijuana river side of wastewater through the border And polluting the beaches of California, officials of the two countries announced Thursday.
Billion gallons of wastewater and toxic chemicals from Tijuana have polluted the peaceful ocean off the next California, closing the beaches and navy navy seals that train in the water. It is despite several efforts and millions of dollars that have been paid in solving the problem over the decades, including under the first Trump administration.
“There is a great commitment from the two countries to strengthen cooperation,” said Mexico’s environmental secretary on Thursday, Alicia Bárcena, after meeting the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, Lee Zeldin, in Mexico City, for the signing of the understanding memorandum.
Rachel Cunha / Reuters 
The agreement occurs three months after Zeldin flew to San Diego to meet Mexican officials and visit the border.
“I felt what many residents of the community lived and had to face,” he said on Thursday. “I saw the degradation of the Tijuana river valley. I heard about the closed beaches. I met the Navy Seals, who had their impact training. It was a powerful visit all around me.”
“The Trump administration is proud to deliver this huge victory in environmental and national security for the Americans in the San Diego region who have lived with these disgusting raw wastewater in their communities for too long,” said Zeldin, According to CBS San Diego Affilié KFMB-TV.
Gregory Bull / AP 
Under the agreement, Mexico will end its allowance of $ 93 million to infrastructure projects, in particular by joining a specific calendar for priority projects until 2027.
The 120 mile long Tijuana river takes place near the coast in Mexico and crosses southern California, where it flows through land belonging to the navy and the Pacific.
As Tijuana wastewater treatment plants have aged, its population and its industry – including manufacturing factories, known as Maquiladoras that make American products – exploded. At the same time, there has been an increase in the quantity of toxins that have made their way in the river and in the County of San Diego – since 2018, more than 100 billion gallons of raw wastewater loaded with chemicals and industrial waste.
Pollution has made it possible not only for swimmers, surfers and rescuers, but also schoolchildren, agents of the border patrol and others who do not even go in the water. Scientists say that wastewater is vaporized when it foams and enters the breath.
California beaches near the border have been closed Most often in the past four years.
Since 2020, more than $ 653 million in funds have been allocated to resolve the problem, but the crisis continued largely due to delays from the Mexican government, Zeldin said.
Zeldin said that this agreement facilitates “demographic growth, operating and maintenance costs and other variables that would make this solution lasting and in the long term”.
He praised the new administration of Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office last October, for his desire to resolve the issue.
Sheinbaum said earlier on Thursday that his government would broaden a wastewater treatment plant which would reduce contamination by the harm of the coast.
“There are other actions that have been signed that we must finish, that we are going to do next year for the entire Tijuana sanitation system, for the entire metropolitan region of Tijuana,” she said.
Sheinbaum said the United States must also make investments in the binational problem.
Referring to another agreement to send more water to the United States to reduce the water debt from Mexico to Rio Grande, Sheinbaum said that the Tijuana river agreement “is a good example of how our technical teams are sitting, they can solve a problem that did not seem soiled.”
The United States has agreed to complete the expansion of the South Bay international wastewater treatment plant next month. The agreement also stipulates that Mexico diverts 10 million gallons per day of wastewater treated far from the shore.
