Border Report: Rosarito Desal Plant Could Finally Get off the Ground

As water shortages loom in Baja California, the state’s plans for a desalination plant are back on track after years of delay.

An undeveloped 50-acre plot next to a power plant in northern Rosarito Beach – envisioned as the site of the proposed desalination facility – is now in Mexican government hands. By the end of the year, the state of Baja California expects to invite prospective developers to submit bids.

Supporters say it’s not a moment too soon. Global warming threatens to reduce future deliveries from the Colorado River, the state’s main water supply. Like San Diego, Baja California’s coastal regions are largely dependent on the Colorado River for water, and authorities face growing pressure to find alternate sources.

Some Tijuana residents have already faced water shutoffs in recent years. A former director of the state water agency in Tijuana warned recently that in the next five years, the supply won’t meet the city’s needs.

A point person on the desalination project has been the state’s treasury secretary, Marco Antonio Moreno Mexia. In Mexicali last week, he told reporters that in its initial phase, the  plant would have the capacity to produce up to 2.2 cubic meters per second of drinking water, or about 50 million gallons daily–the size of the Poseidon desalination plant in Carlsbad.

This volume, the secretary said, “would secure the water supply in the coastal region for the next 20 years.” He estimated the cost of this initial phase would be about $360 million.

Though there is no final word on the financing, Gov. Marina del Pilar Avila has stressed that this would be a “public project, with public financing from the federal and state governments.” Speaking with reporters, last month she said “…the water will not be privatized, because then it becomes a commodity and not a right.”

The idea of building a desalination plant in Rosarito Beach has been around for decades. It seemed to finally get off the ground under former Gov. Francisco Vega de Lamadrid in 2016, through a public-private partnership spearheaded by a Mexican company, NSC Agua, that was a subsidiary of the Cayman Islands-based company, Consolidated Water. The other two partners in the project were NuWater of Singapore and the French company Degremont. 

The plan was for a reverse osmosis plant that at full buildout would produce 100 million gallons a day, which would have made it the largest in the Western Hemisphere. Under the agreement, the group was to develop, build and operate the plant for 37 years, selling the water to the state, which would in turn distribute it to consumers. 

But from the beginning, the project generated opposition in Baja California.

Critics questioned everything from its size to its environmental impact to a plan to sell some of that water to San Diego County. They said the state had done far too little to develop other alternatives such as water-reuse projects, given that much of Tijuana’s treated wastewater ends up in the Pacific Ocean. Opponents said there was little transparency about the selection process, and that the arrangement would result in exorbitant increases in water rates.

“The terms were profitable for the company, but they generated a very critical situation for the state’s finances,” Vicente Sanchez, a researcher on water issues at the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, a Tijuana-based think tank.

In June 2020, Vega’s successor, Jaime Bonilla, unilaterally canceled the contract, saying it was not financially feasible. That led Consolidated Water to demand compensation of more than $50 million from the Mexican government in a complaint filed before an international business tribunal.

Last month, the consortium announced a $36.3 million settlement with the Mexican government, most of which would go to cover the cost of the Rosarito Beach parcel that is critical to the construction of the plant. The funds have come from Mexico’s federal infrastructure fund, FONADIN. 

Moreno Mexia, the treasury secretary, has said that in the project’s first phase there is no intention of selling the water to the United States. 

But plans for the plant have continued to raise questions. Earlier this month, members of a citizens group, Comité Metropolitano para la Defensa del Agua, delivered a statement to Gov. Avila, seeking information about the project and questioning its environmental impact.

“Once again the desalination plant is being planned without public input,” it reads. “We ask that this time, Rosarito be informed and consulted about what will affect Rosarito.”

Baja California Residents Protest Rise in Crime

For the first time in more than a decade, anger about rising crime in Baja California brought crowds of protestors to the streets of its major cities this month. Demonstrations took place July 17 in Tijuana, Mexicali, Ensenada and Tecate. 

Called by the business sector umbrella group Consejo Coordinador Empresarial, the candlelight protests came on the heels of a series of high-profile violent incidents in the state. 

“Once again, organized crime is advancing and gaining ground, and we’re not seeing a reaction from the three levels of government to put a stop to it,” said Carlos Jaramillo, the business council’s leader in Tijuana.

The protests took place days after the killing of Minerva Perez Castro, who headed the Ensenada office of the national fishing trade group, CANAINPESCA. Perez was gunned down on July 8 outside her company, Atenea del Mar, just hours after complaining about illegal fishing.

Baja California’s attorney general last week ruled out extortion by organized crime as a motive for the killing. She said the strongest evidence pointed to a fishing dispute, but did not offer details.

The gathering of more than 200 people in Tijuana’s Rio Zone on that warm Wednesday night was not large, considering the city’s population of more than two million. Still, it was remarkable, a crowd that harked back to a previous period of rising violence, from 2007 to 2009, when far larger anti-crime protests took place.

Though led by the business sector, the gathering drew others as well. Among the participants was Fernando Ocegueda, president of Asociación Unidos Por los Desaparecido de Baja California, a group that advocates for families of the missing. “I have faith that this movement can continue growing,” Ocegueda told me.