Posted on 02/25/2007 1:30:01 PM PST by NormsRevenge
When it rains in this border town, toxic goo from Mexican slums and factories flows down the Tijuana River onto U.S. soil. It winds through tidal marshes and ends up in the Pacific Ocean, closing the beach to swimmers and diehard surfers 198 days last year.
The U.S. government found a novel fix: pay a private developer an estimated $700 million to build and manage a treatment plant in Tijuana, Mexico. If the plant sells recycled water to thirsty Mexican factories, U.S. taxpayers will get some of their money back.
Ground has not yet broken and the 7-year-old agreement between the U.S. and Bajagua LLC is looking more fragile than ever amid growing criticism that the no-bid contract would fatten the developer's pockets and fail to contain the sewage. This month, the Bush administration proposed funding a treatment plant on U.S. soil - which would effectively kill the Mexico venture.
Bajagua still counts on strong bipartisan support in the San Diego-area congressional delegation, including Democrat Bob Filner, whose district includes Imperial Beach, a town of 28,000 people. Filner, one of the project's biggest champions in Washington, has received more than $60,000 in campaign donations from the company and its associates since 1996. In all, Bajagua investors have donated more than $100,000 to political campaigns.
Filner defends the Mexican plant as a good public-private partnership and said he was surprised by the Bush administration's move to scuttle it. He predicted Congress would rebuff the White House.
"We've already spent 10 years working on this, and it's the first real chance to clean up a problem that's plagued us for decades," Filner said.
Bajagua was founded in the late 1990s by San Diego land-use consultant Jim Simmons and Mexican real-estate developer Enrique Landa after the U.S. government stumbled in its efforts to treat Tijuana's runaway sewage. The International Boundary and Water Commission, a binational agency, had just built a U.S.-financed, $240 million plant in San Diego that failed to meet federal clean-water standards.
Enter Bajagua. Instead of giving the IBWC more taxpayer money to solve a problem it didn't fix the first time, the company argued, the U.S. government would pay Bajagua over 20 years to build and operate a plant in Tijuana, a sprawling industrial city of 1.3 million.
For Bajagua, the real prize would be a steady supply of water pumped south from the existing U.S. plant that, once clean, could be sold back to Mexican factories.
"We were never going to make a lot of money treating sewage," said Simmons. "Where we make money is in producing a product, and that product is water."
In 1999, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found the project was "infeasible" and endorsed a plan to build aeration ponds on the U.S. side of the border.
Bajagua stepped up its campaign donations and began making strategic hires in Washington. One was Brian Bilbray, a Republican former mayor of Imperial Beach who, in the 1980s, commandeered a bulldozer and shoveled sewage back into Mexico.
Representing Imperial Beach in Congress, Bilbray co-sponsored Filner's 2000 legislation to build a sewage plant in Mexico. After losing a re-election bid, Bilbray testified in Congress in support of Bajagua in 2001, without disclosing that he was a lobbyist for the company. Bilbray was elected to Congress last year in another district.
Recipients of Bajagua's donations include Bilbray; Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Alpine; Rep. Susan Davis, D-San Diego; President Bush's 2004 campaign and Democratic and Republican congressional campaign committees.
A year after Simmons met Vice President Dick Cheney at a Republican fund-raiser in New Mexico in 2002, the vice-president's office arranged meetings in Washington to smooth interagency negotiations on the project, according to Simmons.
"To get a bill passed through the U.S. Congress requires that you talk to the lawmakers, and once you have the legislation you need to go to the agencies to get the appropriations," Simmons said. "The IBWC gave us no direction, so we sought it out ourselves."
The Mexican government, long lukewarm toward the project, recently expressed support. As Bajagua reviews bids from engineering contractors, the San Diego congressional delegation continues to be its best ally; Bilbray calls it "the only game in town."
With no guarantee of government funding, time is running short for Bajagua. A federal judge has ordered that the treated sewage meet federal standards by September 2008.
In its annual budget proposal this month, the White House included $66 million for a sewage plant on U.S. soil, next to the San Diego plant, if Bajagua fails to break ground by May 2.
Carlos Marin, the U.S. commissioner of the IBWC, said he can't pin everything on the Mexican plant because his agency, not Bajagua, is on the hook for potential court fines and penalties if it doesn't satisfy the court order.
"If the Bajagua project for some reason fails, we can go to option B," he said.
What a waste of taxpayer money (i.e. our money)... I can't believe Bilbray associated himself with this idiocy.
http://www.ibwc.state.gov/PAO/CURPRESS/2005/ContractorShortList.pdf
February 12, 2007
IBWC ANNOUNCES SHORT LIST OF BIDDERS FOR
CROSS-BORDER SANITATION PROJECT
Progress being made to help resolve decades-old problem
impacting San Diego beaches
Bilbray, when he was the mayor for Imperial Beach, bulldozed shut the estuary from the Tijuana sludge swamp.
The EPA, of course, came down hard, as the ecological situation is a "sewage based" environment.
Goat canyon is a disaster, as all the illegals crap on the hillsides, and the next rain washes it down stream, eventually into the ocean.
Short of building a wall that protrudes into the ocean to prevent currents from carrying anything, there aren't a lot of solutions..
I'm not sure why the US taxpayer should pay for this. Make the Mexicans pay, and if they won't, then the Californians. But I'm not getting much benefit from this here in Florida.
*not getting much benefit from this here in Florida.*
Fla, and all other states are getting cheap food due to the illegals while we in San Diego and others in CA are paying millions of dollars a year on their health care, education, crime, etc.
We are over run with illegals by the tens of thousands here in San Diego and about time others pick up the tab also.
We here get the crap and also pay for it.
"I'm not sure why the US taxpayer should pay for this. Make the Mexicans pay, and if they won't, then the Californians. But I'm not getting much benefit from this here in Florida."
Seriously, you didn't just day that. With all the federal money (read-us taxpayer money) pumped into FL everytime the wind blows over 50mph, you got a lot of nerve.
Tell you what, give CA back all the fed money that came from CA taxpayers and they'll build their own sewage treatment plant.
BTW - If you represent the fair opinion of many Floridians, all I can say is what a bunch of ungrateful a-holes.
Yes, well I would be the first to say the same thing about Florida. That's the reason I have insurance, and I don't think I should have to pay to compensate those who don't.
We may profess to be Conservatives but when it comes to the government trouth we all feed--like it or not!
Right now Tijuan sewage is pumped up Harbor Drive in San Diego ..past the airport to Pt. Loma to be processed. This was done to prevent it being released into the sea by the Mexican govt. This is pure extortion...treat it or eat it.
Just one of many insults heaped on the citizens of CA by Mexico.
Poop Ping!
If you want on, or off this S. Texas/Mexico ping list, please FReepMail me.
That is gross!
$90 million of the $5.4 billion Prop 84 that just passed in California is going to a Colorado River project, including the Salton Sea. Funny, no one mentioned it was paying to clean up sludge from Mexico.
Poop Ping!hehe! Reminds me of the times as kids that we'd call folks and tell them that we were from Roto-Rooter and that we'd had enough Shiite out of them. :)
Bombing Tijuana would be cheaper.
Poop is an old term for inside information.
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