The recent collapse of a major wastewater line and subsequent closure of several San Diego beaches has once again highlighted the fragility of the Tijuana River watershed system. For decades, this region has suffered from inadequate urban planning, deferred investment, fragmented responsibility, and aging infrastructure, leaving communities on both sides of the border with unsafe water and polluted air.
While beach closures have become routine for San Diegans, they should not be accepted as normal. Frustration alone, however, will not repair these systems or protect public health.
Progress requires sustained investment, collaborative execution, and institutional accountability.
Across the CaliBaja region, a monumental shift is underway. Long-delayed infrastructure projects are moving forward with unprecedented binational coordination.
Over the last three years, Mexico has invested $145 million, exceeding its near-term funding commitments for wastewater improvements, including system rehabilitation and expanded treatment capacity. Attention is also being given to underlying vulnerabilities that have driven repeated failures.
Rehabilitation of the Parallel Gravity Main is addressing a critical weakness in the collection system, while additional binational projects are replacing more than 35,000 feet of deteriorated pipeline and modernizing key lift stations. These efforts are expected to prevent millions of gallons of untreated sewage from entering the river each day.
For too long, infrastructure challenges in this watershed have been addressed in isolation—one project, one jurisdiction, one funding stream at a time. The integrated approach now emerging, where investments are sequenced, coordinated, and reinforced across agencies and borders, is essential in a system where water and consequences do not stop at a line on a map.
The North American Development Bank (NADBank) was created to play this role. For more than three decades, NADBank has operated as a binational platform to finance and deliver environmental infrastructure along the U.S.-Mexico border.
In addition to funding projects, it connects partners, aligns priorities, and ensures that investments translate into measurable outcomes.
At the end of April, John Beckham, managing director of NADBank, joined the Comisión Estatal de Servicios Públicos de Tijuana, the Environmental Protection Agency, and officials from the state of Baja California to break ground on a critical rehabilitation project in the Tijuana River area. This initiative will expand wastewater collection and conveyance infrastructure, an essential step toward improving cross-border water quality and strengthening public health in the region.
Even with this progress, the Tijuana River watershed remains strained. Addressing these conditions requires not only completing projects already in motion but sustaining the commitment that brought them forward.
California has a clear opportunity to accelerate progress through Proposition 4, which provides funding to address water quality challenges in cross-border systems. The impact of that investment will depend on how effectively it is deployed—prioritizing projects that are ready to move, reinforcing binational efforts already underway, and ensuring that new infrastructure is built with long-term operations and maintenance in mind.
Baja California and federal authorities in Mexico must maintain focus on high-impact projects and consistent execution. The United States must do the same, aligning federal resources with binational priorities and ensuring that timelines reflect the urgency communities are experiencing.
The Tijuana River crisis will not be solved by a single project, a single funding cycle, or a single governmental entity. It requires consistency, alignment, and a commitment to working as a single system.
For the first time in years, this work is underway, aligned, and within reach—if we continue to move forward together.