Some 22 billion gallons of raw sewage have flowed from Mexico into San Diego County since the end of December, the International Boundary and Water Commission reported on Wednesday.
“Transboundary flows continue down the Tijuana River from recent rains,” the IBWC, a binational entity responsible for shared water resources, said in a statement on Twitter.
Raw sewage is flowing into the Tijuana River Valley.
A private developer inadvertently damaged a 60-inch pipe on Feb. 10 which led to the spillage, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Most of the sewage is spilling into Smuggler’s Gulch and Goat Canyon.
A tentative agreement has been reached with Baja California officials to begin mitigation measures to prevent raw sewage from leaking into the Pacific Ocean.
Imperial Beach Mayor Serge Dedina told KPBS Midday Edition he met Tuesday night with Kurt Honold, Baja California’s secretary of economy and innovation, and Jose Armando Fernandez, secretary of water for Baja California.
The San Diego region last year secured $300 million to plug a decades-long wastewater pollution crises in waters that snake across the U.S.-Mexico border and dump raw sewage, trash and sediment into the Pacific Ocean.
On Tuesday, Environmental Protection Agency officials held a virtual public meeting attended by more than 130 people to reveal 10 project proposals being considered to fix crumbing wastewater infrastructure at the border using the $300 million earmarked by the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA).
Scientists across the nation are examining Southern California’s poop — maybe even yours — with the hope of more quickly identifying COVID-19 hotspots and better preparing for future surges. The information could also signal when stay-at-home orders can be safely eased in specific communities.
Untreated sewage has been used for years to track viruses as well as to analyze opioid use by neighborhood. Now the race is on to determine whether it can serve as an early warning system for the new coronavirus, particularly since the small fraction of the population receiving swab tests cannot capture the breadth of asymptomatic infections.
“Testing of every individual is very difficult. But if you have 50,000 people in a community, you may be able to determine the prevalence by testing the wastewater,” said Sunny Jiang, a microbiologist leading a pilot project at UC Irvine to identify COVID-19 in sewage systems.
The latest testing of raw sewage at Lake County Special Districts’ four treatment facilities found no presence of the virus that causes COVID-19 at any of the plants late in April, despite the fact that samples earlier in the month confirmed its presence.
Special Districts Administrator Jan Coppinger reported Friday that she received the latest test results from Biobot, a Massachusetts firm that is offering the testing as part of a pro bono program it’s conducting along with MIT, Harvard and Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
The tests are used to detect the presence of SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The virus is shed in the stools of infected people.
Sewage testing also has successfully tracked the poliovirus and consumption of drugs such as opioids, according to Dr. Mariana Matus, chief executive officer and cofounder of Biobot.
Biobot is seeking to use wastewater testing to proactively detect outbreaks and help governments and communities to get ahead of public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tap water is more strictly regulated than the bottled water being hoarded, officials say. Tap water is treated specifically to remove infectants like the new coronavirus, which “is a type of virus that is particularly susceptible to disinfection and standard treatment,” according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency website.
