“In the West, water flows uphill towards money,” Marc Reisner writes in “Cadillac Desert.” His observation rings even truer today. Just south of Tijuana, for example, plans are underway to build a $600 million ocean desalination plant that will increase Tijuana’s water supply by a whopping 50%. While Tijuana arguably needs more water to feed its growing population and to counter cuts from the Colorado River, the project raises an important question: Will that additional supply of drinking water result in more sewage coming across the border?
–Written by Doug Liden, a retired engineer from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency who spent the last two decades working on Tijuana River issues from EPA’s San Diego Border Office, the U.S. Consulate in Tijuana and the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.