Written by Thomas Geiser
For years, the County of San Diego has suffered due to cross border sewage spills coming from the border region between Mexico and the United States. Hundreds of millions of gallons of toxic materials and debris flow through the Tijuana River Valley every year. This sewage pollutes San Diego’s beaches and the surrounding environment damaging the local ecology and public health.
This hazard makes it dangerous for San Diegans to enjoy their beaches as they run the risk of illness just by getting in the water. This environmental disaster stems from two sources: the first cause is the federal government and their waste treatment plants on the border that cannot keep up with the volume of sewage and the second is the rapidly expanding city of Tijuana that does not possess the infrastructure to process the waste of its growing population. Now, San Diego suffers through no fault of its own. But just because San Diego is not responsible for the cause of the pollution doesn’t mean that it isn’t responsible for the result.
Now comes the good news. Greg Cox, the Chairman of the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, recently secured $300 million in federal funding to improve San Diego’s infrastructure to deal with the sewage problem. This money comes as a result of Cox’s hard work dealing with the federal government culminating in the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, otherwise known as USMCA.
This is exciting for our region because deal includes $300 million for border water infrastructure projects. Our job now is to ensure as much of that money stays here to fix cross border sewage crisis. I’ll be working with EPA to make sure this happens!https://t.co/rKdlamXoNC
— Greg Cox (@SupervisorCox) January 16, 2020
Concerned parties in San Diego wanted to join lawsuits against the federal government to pressure it into making substantive changes, but Supervisor Cox saw the flaw in that plan. Lawsuits may indeed put pressure on the federal government, but they are slow, expensive, and unlikely to produce the immediate results that San Diego needs to address the sewage problem. Cox understood that the best course of action was not to attack the federal government, but to explain the danger of allowing this problem to persist. As the saying goes, “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”
Once again, Republicans are making major strides in the area of environmental protection and pollution prevention. Democrats make a fuss on the national scale about the need for such action but much of the truly important environmental work takes place on a local level. This is because the local government is the most in touch with local environmental issues and is in the best position to deal with these problems.
Republicans understand that these small changes are far more meaningful than broad federal legislation that cannot possibly address the nuances of local environmental issues. Democrats need to understand that change does not happen all at once; it happens in small increments through calculated prudence and diligence. Supervisor Greg Cox’s hard work clearly paid off this time and San Diego finally has the resources to start dealing with its cross border sewage problem. The city will hopefully be back to clean beaches in no time.
