Imperial Beach resident Matt Henry, his wife and their six children no longer live in their home that is about a six-minute bike ride from the beach. The family instead sleeps in their RV in their driveway so they can run air purifiers that allow them to be free of the noxious odors created by the sewage-tainted pollution that flows across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Out of desperation, he and one of his children attended a three-hour public meeting Tuesday of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the federal agency responsible for operating and maintaining the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant. Commissioner Maria-Elena Giner, head of the IBWC, told Henry and others gathered at the meeting that a long-awaited project to repair and expand the dilapidated facility broke ground earlier Tuesday.

“This expansion, Giner said, is just part of our strategy to help protect public health.”

But it will be several years before the benefits of construction projects on both sides of the border are felt and data yet to be collected reveals other possible solutions. South County residents said relief cant come soon enough.

“We’re here; just know that there’s people behind this,” Henry told Giner. “Please, keep the urgency.”

Giner acknowledged that almost every area of the 30-year-old South Bay plant “needs to be touched.” The $600 million expansion of the treatment plant, of which the federal agency has secured $400 million, is intended to double the plant’s capacity to 50 million gallons of Tijuana’s wastewater daily. Together with the overhaul of a wastewater plant in Baja California, its expansion should eliminate about 90 percent of untreated wastewater reaching South County shorelines.

The project kicks off with the design work, which may take nearly two years. Construction, parts of which are anticipated to begin simultaneously, should take an additional five years to complete.

Meanwhile, South Bay residents say noxious sewer gas odors are lingering at night and into the early morning hours, despite the volume of sewage flows significantly dropping since Mexico fixed a major pump in September. Flows have gone from peaking at 45 million gallons per day to about 6 million gallons daily.

Many residents and local elected officials have called on the state and federal governments to declare the sewage crisis an emergency to help speed up projects and get more funding and resources for residents. But the governments have argued that the issue does not qualify as one and that they are already spearheading efforts such as approving funding for air purifiers or bringing in the nations top public health agency to investigate health impacts.

Giner said deciding whether to declare an emergency is the governors right as your elected official, but that his meetings in the White House are making it easier for us to get more funding.

She said one of the federal agency’s top priorities is to eliminate flows and sediment in the Tijuana River during dry weather seasons. Up until September, the river had been running around the clock and year-round for at least a year with untreated wastewater.

One major task on the U.S. side is underway: repairing Junction Box 1, which officials have dubbed the “front door” of the South Bay plant.

With its set of gates, Junction Box 1 is supposed to control sewage flows from Tijuana into the South Bay plant. But it has been broken since 2021, forcing the federal agency to take in more wastewater than it was designed to handle and ultimately damaging parts of the plant. Giner said a temporary fix will go online next month until the $5.8 million rehabilitation of the junction box is complete, likely in the spring.

“That’s a really important piece of infrastructure that helps us protect our plant,” she said, adding that with more control over how much wastewater the South Bay plant can accept, IBWC anticipates maintaining compliance with federal water quality standards.

The federal agency has racked up multiple Clean Water Act violations for releasing wastewater into the Pacific Ocean beyond what it is permitted. In August, it missed the San Diego Regional Water Quality Control Board’s deadline to comply with its permit.

Giner said then that equipment failure, due to uncontrollable, record-breaking flows of sewage and sediment, and political challenges, have made it impossible to get three of the five primary treatment tanks online by that deadline. The South Bay plant has four tanks online now, but more work is still needed to reach compliance, which officials said should happen next month.

Also in November, the IBWC plans to investigate all of the sources and quality of flows into the Tijuana River.

Meanwhile, Mexico will explore diverting or reusing treated wastewater from two of its plants in Baja California to reduce flows in the Tijuana River. According to a 2021 report from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, about half of dry-weather flow in the river consists of treated effluent from the Arturo Herrera and La Morita plants. Those flows are redundantly treated again at the already limited South Bay plant.

Mexico also anticipates completing the construction of its San Antonio de Los Buenos plant by the end of the year.