Mexico’s ambassador to the United States pledged during his first San Diego visit to keep working on the Tijuana River pollution crisis, touring the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant as cross-border sewage continues to plague the region. Roberto Lazzeri called the long-running crisis one of the top priorities of the binational agenda and said Mexico is working to secure the resources needed for infrastructure fixes on its side of the border.
Lazzeri, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, was interviewed at the Mexican consulate in San Diego on October 30, as reported by the San Diego Union-Tribune. During his San Diego trip he also met with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, U.S. Border Patrol and the International Boundary and Water Commission.
A Tour Focused on Sanitation
Lazzeri toured the South Bay plant and the surrounding area alongside Chad McIntosh, commissioner of the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission, who led the tour. A spokesperson for the commission, Frank Fisher, said the conversation centered on the San Diego–Tijuana sanitation issue, and that Lazzeri expressed interest and support for solving the pollution crisis, per the Union-Tribune’s reporting.
The South Bay plant treats sewage flowing from Tijuana. As Voice of San Diego reported, the binational watershed has more than 2.8 million people, and the region has experienced accelerated population growth and depleted sanitation infrastructure. But the facility was never built to handle everything flowing through the river. The plant was built to treat sewage — it wasn’t designed to remove the industrial chemicals and heavy metals found in the water.
Aging Pipes, Industrial Chemicals
The scale of Tijuana’s infrastructure problem is stark. A 2025 study found more than 2,360 miles of sewer mains in the city, 57 percent of which are failing due to age and wear, per the same Voice of San Diego report. San Diego Coastkeeper’s water-quality testing has also found industrial chemicals, heavy metals and pesticides flowing into the Tijuana River on a regular basis, with each round of testing typically turning up 10 to 20 chemicals that the outlet’s report says could only come from factories…