A plan to repair aging infrastructure that dumped millions of gallons of untreated wastewater into the Santa Cruz River — impacting Nogales on both sides of the border — has been approved.

It is one of the efforts taken in the past several years to clean up portions of the river and aid local economies. Water recreation activities alone pump almost $189 million annually into the region, according to the Audubon Society.  

For years, the seeping sewage was one of the least-known “environmental train wrecks” in the Southwest, said in an article last week on the Arizona Department of Water Resources website that the agreement.  

Periodically, the decrepit, over-taxed International Outfall Interceptor (IOI), which is a part of a sewer system serving the towns of Nogales on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, would fail, often resulting in untreated wastewater getting dumped into the Nogales Wash, an important tributary to the Santa Cruz River.

Over the years, environmental officials have warned residents and businesses about using or swimming in the water. 

A disastrous spill following a fierce summer storm in July 2017 caused Governor Doug Ducey to declare an emergency and call on the U.S. Corps of Engineers for assistance.  

A major win for Arizona 

Last week, the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality (ADEQ) and the U.S. section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) announced they have entered into a settlement agreement to set forth a comprehensive plan to mitigate future discharges.

Gov. Ducey hailed the agreement as “a major win for Southern Arizona, helping resolve a decades-old issue that threatened the health and safety of residents.”

Treated water from the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant supplies water for drinking, ranching, farming and other activities critical to the Arizona economy, Ducey stated when the agreement was announced. The river sustains habitats critical to migratory birds, bobcat, deer, javelina and other species. It also is one of the main water supply sources for Nogales, Arizona and Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. 

“Working together, ADEQ and USIBWC have developed a plan that will upgrade this critical infrastructure, reduce hazards from storms and flooding and protect people and businesses in this border community,” Ducey said in a statement.

Settlement agreement to repair 

The calls for $38,790,000 in funding to reinforce the aged IOI from the U.S.-Mexico border to the treatment plant located in Rio Rico about 9 miles north of Nogales.

The agreement and path forward include:

• USIBWC is investing $34.2 million of existing funds to immediately begin upgrading the IOI.
• USIBWC has finalized engineering plans and in cooperation with state and local officials and begun negotiating agreements necessary to access the IOI from various locations along its length. USIBWC will put the construction contract out to bid in the fall.
• Arizona is supporting the project with $2.59 million. 
• Additional support from other partners includes $1 million from Freeport McMoRan Foundation, and $1 million from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for a companion project to work on Nogales, Arizona sewer pipelines that connect to the IOI.
• ADEQ is currently working to find funds to install a metal screen in the IOI near the border to capture large debris that could otherwise cause sewage spills, estimated at $2.6-$3.3 million to install, and $360,000 for yearly maintenance.
• USIBWC is negotiating with the Mexican Section of the IBWC to secure Mexico’s cost participation in the pipeline rehabilitation.

Years-long efforts help reduce toxic levels 

A report by the Sonoran Institute in Tucson compared the conditions along the Santa Cruz River from the Nogales Wash to Amado in 2018 and 2008 found several favorable developments, including the fact that ammonia concentrations are no longer toxic, the aquifer is receiving better recharge, bringing back fish species including an endangered fish.

According to the report, , the Santa Cruz River in the region is now ‘alive and significantly healthier.’ 

One of the main reasons was a $64 million upgrade in 2009 to the Nogales International Wastewater Treatment Plant, sending cleaner effluent into the north-flowing Santa Cruz River.

Santa Cruz River important to the regional economy. 

The ongoing effort to clean up the river is important to the economy of Santa Cruz County, which has the highest poverty rate in Southern Arizona, according to U.S. Census data.

Recreation along the rivers and waterways in the county supports 1,600 local jobs and contributes $189 million annually to local economies, according to the . 

All-out effort by Arizona state and federal leaders 

The settlement agreement came out of a 2012 suit filed by ADEQ that alleged federal Clean Water Act violations. To establish a path forward for the infrastructure upgrades, ADEQ and USIBWC entered into settlement discussions in 2018.

“Reaching this agreement ushers in a new era of partnership and problem solving among local, state, federal and international government entities,” ADEQ Director Misael Cabrera said in an announcement. “While there is still work to do, this settlement supports the necessary rehabilitation of critical infrastructure at the border to prevent ongoing catastrophic failures, and protect public health and the environment.”

The final outcome resulted from an effort by state and federal leaders in Arizona including:

-Arizona Congressional members Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, Sen. Martha McSally, Rep. Raul M. Grijalva and Ann Kirkpatrick 

-Arizona state legislators Sen. Frank Pratt, Rep. Gail Griffin and Rep. Rosanna Gabaldon

-Santa Cruz County Supervisor Bruce Bracker

-Arizona-Mexico Commission Vice Chair Juan Ciscomani

-Arizona Department of Water Resources Director Thomas Buschatzke

-Office of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich

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Government and business representatives from along the Arizona-Mexico border met at the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas in Nogales, Ariz., Friday to discuss commerce-related concerns for the region.

“What I really want… is to learn what we need to do specifically — when it comes to Nogales, when it comes to Douglas, when it comes to our border communities — to make sure that we’re doing everything possible so that this region can continue to prosper,” said Glenn Hamer, president and CEO of the Arizona �鶹��ýӳ�� of Commerce and Industry.

“This whole area is an incredibly vibrant community,” Hamer said. “It’s leading the way for the state of Arizona.”

State infrastructure, especially in the border region, has been of prime concern for Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, said Juan Ciscomani, senior advisor for regional and international affairs at the governor’s office.

“He respects and appreciates this area; that’s why he’s been here quite often,” said Ciscomani, who also serves as vice chair of the Arizona-Mexico Commission (AMC) board.

Ducey included funding in his fiscal year 2020 state budget plan for a cold storage inspection facility on the border in Nogales, he said.

“The relationship overall with Mexico has been a key priority for the governor, and [the AMC has] been saying and demonstrating that for now almost five years,” Ciscomani said.

Guillermo Valencia, chairman of the Greater Nogales and Santa Cruz County Port Authority, started off the discussion by describing the interconnected nature of the Nogales communities on each side of the Arizona-Mexico border.

“As a community, Nogales, Arizona, doesn’t stand by itself,” Valencia said. “Nogales, Sonora, is a very important part of our community.”

“Our students go to school there; your students come to school here,” he said. “We go to church there; they come to church here. They come to our parks here; they come to our stores here. We go to the dentist over there; we go cut our hair over there. There’s a big synergy that goes on between both communities, and we depend a lot on each other.”

Friday’s discussion focused on issues affecting businesses that depend on cross-border trade for success, specifically the produce and manufacturing industries.

The Tomato Suspension Agreement, a  between the United States and Mexico that kept tomato supply high and prices low, ended May 7, resulting in a 17.5 percent tariff on tomatoes.

“We’re now facing down duties this week,” said Lance Jungmeyer, president of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas. “A typical tomato company in Nogales… could be facing $500,000 in cash deposits per week just to stay in business. So, you multiply that over the course of a year, and you can see that it’s very difficult for companies to remain in this business.”

On the other hand, there are new opportunities on the horizon, Jungmeyer said, such as the proposed cold storage inspection facility in the governor’s budget.

“That’s an opportunity to bring in items that we’re not touching at all right now,” Jungmeyer said. “We barely bring in any berries at all, and that’s one of the fastest-growing items out of Mexico. There are other temperature-sensitive items that don’t come to Nogales at all. That’s going to open up a huge opportunity, so it’s a small investment that could pay off for years and years and years, and so that gives us opportunities to promote the corridor and the wait times and system improvements.”

The local port authority in Nogales follows the business community’s lead to determine what the most important challenges are, said Bruce Bracker, vice-chairman of the board for the Greater Nogales-Santa Cruz County Port Authority and supervisor for Santa Cruz County’s third district.

First and foremost, Nogales ports of entry — DeConcini for vehicles and Morley Gate for pedestrians — are extremely shorthanded, leading to long delays crossing the border into the U.S. from Mexico, Bracker said.

“Both of these ports of entry just are not equipped to deal with the needs of today,” Bracker said. “They were built 20, 30 years ago… they’re a floodplain, they don’t have enough passenger vehicle lanes, they don’t have enough pedestrian lanes, and it’s choking our downtown.”

Nogales is losing retail business on both sides of the border because residents don’t want to risk an excessive wait to cross, Bracker said.

“They don’t know what they’re going to get when they walk up to the border — whether it’s going to be a 15-minute crossing, a 20-minute crossing or a two-hour crossing,” he said.

Another issue is that the International Outflow Interceptor (IOI) — the sewer line from Nogales, Sonora, to the Waste Treatment Facility in Rio Rico, Arizona — needs to be upgraded. Misael Cabrera, director of the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, is  to improve the line, Bracker said.

“We’re a great community; we’re a clean community,” he said. “Our air is clean, and our water is great. We just need to make sure that we protect our infrastructure so that it stays that way.”

Issues such as outdated infrastructure and extended wait times at the border impact the region’s economy in both seen and unseen ways, Valencia said.

“There are people that say, ‘I won’t go. I won’t use it… I won’t cross the border,’” Valencia said. “And they eliminate that from their plans, so that hurts.”

Workforce shortages and border wait times are affecting the local manufacturing industry as well, said Joshua Rubin, account manager at Javid, a Nogales, Arizona-based maquiladora founded in 1983.

Mexican maquiladoras are unique to other manufacturers in that they operate under  established to lower production costs for U.S. manufacturers. Production equipment can enter Mexico duty-free, and finished products can be exported to the U.S. from Mexico at lower tariffs than from other countries.

“The maquila industry, we’re growing,” Rubin said. The industry is expanding, and Javid is seeing more clients than ever before, he said.

There are about 3,000 vacant jobs in the maquiladora industry now, even with an employment increase of 4,000 employees in the past year, Rubin said. As the industry continues to grow, the need for a larger workforce supply grows, too, he said.

“One of the big things that we’re noticing is that a lot of the U.S. companies are seeing the talent that there is here in Mexico,” Rubin said. “It’s a little bit cheaper to be able to manufacture down here, so we have customers that are sending a lot more of their product line down here.”

One of Javid’s clients is even closing down its Pennsylvania facility in favor of having 100 percent of its operations in Mexico, he said.

“The population growth is at a lower pace than the demand for new employees of the maquiladora industry right now,” said Humberto Ramírez, vice president of Javid. “We do need the regional increase of people coming up from out-of-state to come to the borders to look for better-paying jobs, especially now that the minimum wage at the border line increased to double, and it’s a lot higher than it is in the rest of the country, so we can compete salary-wise with the rest of the country.”

One unintended consequence of Mexico’s  near the U.S. border — the result of sweeping economic changes by the country’s current  — is that lower-wage jobs are now approaching or even surpassing the wages of entry-level manufacturing jobs, Ramírez said.

“The Oxxos, the supermarkets that were paying way below the industry — because of this minimum wage increase, all of a sudden they were at the same level,” he said. “They’re competing with us, which created a spiral of turnover… so we’re just adapting to those [changes].”

Now, the maquiladoras want to hire migrant workers from other parts of Latin America, Rubin said.

Companies are hiring, and migrants want to work, but it is difficult for migrant workers to obtain work visas because they are often undocumented and do not have the necessary identification, he said. Many migrants also hope to move on to the U.S. rather than stay in Mexico, he said.

The mayor of Nogales, Sonora, is “100 percent in support” of maquiladoras hiring migrants, but the industry — which makes up about 55 percent of the GDP in Nogales, Sonora — needs Mexican immigration services to get involved so workers can obtain visas, he said.

In total, there are about 100 to 120 maquiladoras employing more than 42,000 workers in Nogales, Sonora, Ramírez said.

Kevin Adam, rural transportation liaison for the Rural Transportation Advocacy Council, said infrastructure — statewide and at the border — needs immediate improvement.

“We’re under-investing by more than a billion [dollars] a year statewide, and that is no more evident than at the border,” Adam said. “Douglas has a plan; they need the funding for it to go. San Luis — same thing.”

Adam said he fears the issue will not be addressed until the state sees a noticeable loss of revenue, which could create “tremendous problems” for the border region.

“At the same time, [there is] tremendous opportunity for economic development if in fact you do see the positive changes,” he said. “We need the infrastructure down here to be a selling point for trade; we don’t need to be shooting for minimal standards.”

Adam and Jungmeyer pointed to State Route 189, which will see , as an example of much-needed infrastructure improvement projects.

It took seven years to “cobble together” funding for SR-189, said Gail Lewis, director of the Office of P3 Initiatives and International Affairs at the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT).

Luis Pedroza, finance director for the city of Douglas, said his city suffers from many of the same issues as Nogales.

“The city of Douglas, we’re running out of space; we need more space,” Pedroza said. “That’s why we’re asking for a new port of entry. Those are our issues plaguing us.”

Mexico is Arizona’s largest trading partner, with two-way trade of $16.6 billion in 2018, and visitors from Mexico contribute 60 to 70 percent of sales tax revenue in Arizona border communities,  the Arizona-Mexico Commission.

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