USA

San Diego – United States and Mexico have signed an agreement that describes specific steps and a new calendar to clean the long -standing problem of the Tijuana River pouring wastewater through the border and polluting the beaches of California, officials of both countries announced on Thursday.

Millions of gallons of wastewater and toxic chemicals from Tijuana have contaminated the Pacific Ocean in southern California in southern California, closing beaches and celebrities of the Navy in the water that train in the water. That is despite multiple efforts and millions of dollars that have spilled to address the problem for decades, even under the first Trump administration.

“There is a great commitment from the two countries to strengthen cooperation,” said the environmental secretary of Mexico, Alicia Bárcena, after meeting with the administrator of the Lee Zeldin Environmental Protection Agency in Mexico City for the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding.

The agreement arrives three months after Zeldin flew to San Diego to meet with Mexican officials and visit the border.

“I smelled what many residents in the community lived and have to deal with,” he said Thursday. “I saw the degradation of the Tijuana River Valley. I heard on the beaches that were closed. I met the Navy Seals, whom they have had their affected training. It was a powerful visit to me.”

“The Trump administration is proud to deliver this massive victory of environmental and national security for Americans in the San Diego area who have been living with these unpleasant raw waters that flow to their communities for too long,” said Zeldin, according to KFMB-TV affiliated by News San Diego.

According to the agreement, Mexico will complete its allocation of $ 93 million for infrastructure projects, including adhesion to a specific schedule for priority projects that cover up to 2027.

The Tijuana River 120 miles runs near the coast in Mexico and crosses south of California, where it flows through land owned by the Navy and the Pacific.

As Tijuana wastewater treatment plants have aged, their population and industry, including manufacturing plants, known as maquiladoras that make US goods retire. At the same time, there has been an increase in the amount of toxins that have reached the river and San Diego County, since 2018, more than 100 billion gallons of raw wastewater loaded with industrial chemicals and garbage.

Contamination has ill to swimmers, surfers and lifeguards, but also schoolchildren, border patrol agents and others that do not even go to the water. Scientists say that wastewater vaporizes when foaming and enters the air that people breathe.

California beaches near the border have been closed Most of the time in the last four years.

Since 2020, more than $ 653 million have been assigned in funds to address the problem, but the crisis has continued largely due to delays by the Mexican government, said Zeldin.

Zeldin said this agreement has factors in “growth, operation and maintenance costs of the population, and other variables that would make this long -term lasting solution.”

He praised the new administration of Mexican president Claudia Sheinbaum, who assumed the position last October, for his willingness to address the problem.

Sheinbaum said early on Thursday that his government would expand a wastewater treatment plant that would reduce the contamination that the coast reaches.

“There are other actions that were signed that we have to complete, that we are going to do in the next year for the entire Tijuana sanitation system, for the entire metropolitan area of Tijuana,” he said.

Sheinbaum said that the United States also has to make investments in the binational problem.

Referring to another agreement to send more water to the United States to reduce Mexico’s water debt in the Rio Grande, Sheinbaum said the Tijuana River agreement “is a good example of how when our technical teams feel, they can solve a problem that seemed insoluble.”

The United States agreed to complete the expansion of the international wastewater treatment plant by South Bay next month. The agreement also stipulates that Mexico this year diverts 10 million gallons per day of wastewater treated away from the shore.

• Environmental Protection Agency
• Atmosphere