The Water Information Program

The commission responsible for cleaning runaway sewage along the U.S.-Mexico border said it will upgrade a government wastewater plant in California instead of paying a private developer to build a new treatment facility across the border in Tijuana, Mexico. The decision by the International Boundary and Water Commission appears to end a decade-long gambit by Bajagua LLC to win hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. contracts to pump partially treated wastewater back to Mexico. The commission said in a statement that expanding the plant it operates in San Diego's San Ysidro area, abutting the border, would be cheaper and faster. The IBWC is under federal court order to bring Mexican wastewater that runs through California on its way to the Pacific Ocean to U.S. clean-water standards by Sept. 30 but is seeking an extension. It said expansion of the San Diego plant will be finished by January 2011. 

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