A massive sewage spill in Tijuana that polluted beaches in San Diego County last month may have been no accident, according to state and local officials.

In a preliminary estimate, officialssaid about143 million gallons of raw sewagespewed into the Tijuana Riverduring a period of more than two weeks that ended Thursday. While cross-border sewage spills of a few million gallons are routine for the region, this is one of the largest suchevents in the last two decades, according towater quality expertsin San Diego.

People from Tijuana to as far north asCoronadohave beencomplaining offoul odorsfor weeks, promptinglawmakers in San Diego County to contact federal regulatorsas well as agenciesin Mexico.

The U.S. regulators said their Mexican counterparts have given little explanation.Mexican officials also havent responded to requests forcomment for this article sinceMonday.

Thiswas like a tsunami of sewage spills, saidImperial BeachMayor Serge Dedina, who said he tried to get answers from officialson both sides of the border for more than a week, with no response.

Whats worse is it looks to me like this was deliberate, he added. It saves [the Mexican agencies]a lot of money in pumping costs, and ultimately, they can get away with it and do it all the time, just on a much smaller scale.

The toxic discharge is estimated to have happened from Feb. 6through Thursday, while repairs were made to a major sewer pipe near the confluence of Mexicos Alamar and Tijuana rivers, according to the U.S. side of theInternational Boundary and Water Commission. Baja Californias State Public Service Commission maintains the sewer system infrastructure in that area.

They basically said it was a bypass of raw sewage into the Tijuana River during the rehabilitation of a large sewer pipeline in Tijuana, said Lori Kuczmanski, spokeswoman for the U.S. side of the commission, whichoversees international water treaties with Mexico, among other things.

The commission announced the spill on Friday. Before that day, officialsin Mexico hadnot responded to multiple inquiries about the incident, according tolocal, regional and federal regulators in the United States. By Tuesday, U.S. officials said, their Mexican counterparts still offered only scant details ofthe situation.

They also said Mexico didnt givethem advance notice of the sewer-pipe repair project.

Was the spill intentional? Well, yeah, said Dave Gibson, executive officer of the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board. It appears they were working on the pipeline. I dont believe that it was a question of it failing.

At least a notification would be a good neighborly thing to do, to let us know what was coming down the river before it got hereso we could alert the public, he added.

A similar project in the United States would include efforts to preventsewagefrom flowing downstream by using booms and then pumping the diverted sewage back into the wastewater system,Gibson said.

To read the article in Spanish, click here

Emerson writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

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'Tsunami of sewage spills' in Tijuana fouls U.S. beaches, may have ... - Los Angeles Times