A wash in southern Arizona where an international sewage pipeline has spilled untreated wastewater has tested positive for excessive levels of E coli, officials said on Thursday.
Testing is ongoing and the public should stay out of Nogales Wash and Santa Cruz River, Santa Cruz County said in a news release. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality performed the tests.
“Until there is more information about the extent of the situation, it is recommended not using water from the Santa Cruz River to water food crops or gardens. Livestock should not be in the river or drinking from it,” Santa Cruz County Health Services Director Jeff Terrell said in a news release.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Thursday declared a state of emergency, saying he was allocating US$200,000 from the general fund to help with repair management as the state’s congressional delegation put pressure on an international water commission to address the issue.
The US Section of the International Boundary and Water Commission (USIBWC) said it had not verified that there is a leak and that the wastewater plant that the pipe leads to was receiving normal flows.
Authorities in Santa Cruz County said they noticed a break in a pipeline during an inspection on Tuesday.
The pipe, also known as the International Outfall Interceptor (IOI), had a breach in a sparsely populated area north of the international border, they said, adding they believed the break happened because of excessive rainwater that put too much pressure on the pipe.
“This week’s severe breach to the International Outfall Interceptor sewage pipeline along the US-Mexico border is just the latest in a long history of unacceptable breakages to this deteriorating pipeline,” US Senator John McCain said in a statement on Wednesday.
The pipe carries 38 to 53 million liters of untreated wastewater from Nogales, Mexico, to a treatment center in Rio Rico, Arizona, operated by the water commission. The water is then released into the Santa Cruz river. The pipe runs for nearly 14km underground.
The city of Nogales said it would cost about US$5 million to repair the pipe, according to a state of emergency it issued on Wednesday.
The IOI has been a point of contention in southern Arizona for years and is embroiled in a lawsuit over who has the financial burden to make repairs on the 45-year-old pipe.
”USIBWC does not own the IOI and is not responsible for its operation or maintenance,” spokeswoman Lori Kuczmanski said.
A federal judge overseeing the lawsuit issued a report in April finding that the water commission owns the pipe. The commission is objecting to the recommendation. A final ruling is pending.
“The IBWC, which is tasked with the management of international water and boundary treaties, should be responsible for managing the infrastructure it relies on so heavily for international gain,” McCain said.
The Nogales, Arizona, area is fraught with issues arising from rainwater. Water runs north into the US from Mexico because of the area’s topography. However, the Mexican side of the border lacks the infrastructure to prevent inundations and debris from hitting the US-side when it rains heavily there.
In 2014, a flood that started on the Mexican side knocked over part of the steel border fence that is 5.5m to 7.3m tall, costing about US$730,000 in repairs. It sent tree trunks and other debris into Arizona, destroying mobile homes and businesses.
The trick to making repairs to the broken pipe will be to beat another set of rainstorms that are supposed to hit the area this weekend, Terrell said during a news conference.
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