A Great Raw Deal in Juarez

Borderland 11:

JUAREZ, MEXICO. How did this happen? Here I am, milling around and waiting with about two hundred people. We are all within a guarded, fenced enclosure topped with barbed wire and that, in turn, is nearly surrounded by a moat filled with raw sewage. The sun beats down, increasing what can only be called an amazing— truly amazing— redolence. A song like a Mexican version of “YMCA” is playing over the public address system.

How did this happen? And where is Dave Barry when you really need him?

I count a half dozen television cameras on a raised platform, all pointed over the crowd to a much shorter platform on which fourteen small white circles indicate where the dignitaries will stand. Two podiums flank the platform. In the background, open ground is covered with a neat carpet of crushed pecan shells. In a large concrete structure nearby, three enormous metal screws— call them postmodern-medieval— rotate and lift pre-treatment wastewater, otherwise known as sewage, to a separating station.

Except for their darker skin, the crowd is watched by the same impassive, sun glassed faces that I associate with the U.S. Secret Service. Only these fellows are here to protect Ernesto Zedillo, the President of Mexico, when he arrives to start the celebration.

Carlos Ramirez, the mayor of El Paso, is standing near me. He has just taken off his tie, having learned that this is an “informal-formal” event, which means President Zedillo will not be wearing a tie. Therefore, all ties must be shed.

His Honor asks if a building in the background has a model of the entire plant. I tell him it does.

“Does it have a bathroom?” he asks.

“Yes”, I say. “I felt the same way myself.”

He tries to leave but is stopped by a security guard. President Zedillo is arriving any moment. No one is allowed to leave the area. Seconds later someone spots a plume of dust. It is a caravan of about eight Chevrolet Suburbans and two police cruisers.

Dignitaries take their positions. A corridor is opened through the crowd so the President can pass and take the center position on the platform.

There are two brief speeches about the importance of water and the environment and how much cooperation was needed to build this plant, each speaker walking to the nearest of the flanking podiums. The President, dressed in tan walking shoes, light olive pants, and a short tan jacket, listens thoughtfully. He makes eye contact with Mayor Ramirez and nods a greeting.

When the speeches are finished one of the podiums is moved to the center, directly in front of President Zedillo. He takes a single step forward to speak. The mountain has moved to Mohammed.

The crowd applauds.

And then, only the blink of an eye later, President Zedillo is gone, the caravan is disappearing in a cloud of dust, and the 1.2 million people of Juarez have their very first wastewater treatment plant.

How did this happen?

Part of the answer is a name: Victor Miramontes. Mr. Miramontes, 48, is CEO of the North American Development Bank, a joint U.S./Mexico enterprise devoted to financing infrastructure along the border. Nearly half the money for this project, which actually came from Environmental Protection Agency funds (with their deep blessing), can be traced to the management and patient negotiation of his agency.

Over dinner in El Paso the night before, I had learned that Mr. Miramontes was an El Paso native, the son of a truck driver whose forebears were migrant workers and miners, a graduate of Stanford, and a former business partner of Henry Cisneros. Like Mr. Cisneros, he possesses a rare combination of scope, sensitivity, and charm— qualities vital to getting things done along the border.

“The city has changed.” He said, speaking of El Paso. “It used to be easy to cross into Juarez. Now it’s difficult. It has killed the relationship. It’s no longer a real twin cities. It has made a distance.”

He is talking about what some call “the tortilla curtain”, the long fence topped with barbed wire that runs along the Rio Grande and separates El Paso from Juarez. In the few areas where there is no fence, Border Patrol cars are stationed within visual distance of each other, round the clock.

“There is a huge difference in income here. It’s almost a fault line.” Mr. Miramontes observes.

He tells me about the beauty and delicate desert ecology of the border region, about the danger a large colonia poses to the underlying aquifer, about the need to build self-sustaining financial markets, about the relationship between running water and home mortgages, about the need for patience because none of the problems on the border can be solved when time is measured by elections. Instead, it will take years and billions. He is talking about a life work of a million small steps.

Ironically, he points out, a dollar spent on wastewater treatment in Mexico may have more environmental and health benefits for the United States than the same money spent on “our” side of the border.

One example can be found further west in San Diego, the home of Qualcomm. The daily weather map in the Union-Tribune carries a pollution warning, noting that the ocean water is polluted from famed Coronado all the way “south to the U.S./Mexico border due to contaminated flows from the Tijuana River.” Like Juarez, Tijuana lacks adequate wastewater treatment. Like Juarez, the Tijuana border area has a tortilla curtain.

The stakes here are huge. They involve the lives of more than 12 million people and the future of big cities like San Diego, El Paso, Tucson, and Phoenix as well as border towns that barely appear on the map.

How much money will it take to provide adequate infrastructure and reduce threats to public health along the entire 2,000-mile border?

Try more than $1 billion in the next five years. Add the same amount over the following five years. Call it $2 billion.

That, however, is less than the change in market value in a single day for Qualcomm. Yet, it is difficult to find the money. Measured against the entire federal budget, $2 billion is no more than rounding error.

Why is it so difficult to find the money?

Because whether it is Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, or California, the border is still the border. Many residents feel the border is America’s throwaway child.

Something about 1.2 million people getting their first waste water treatment plant tells me that feeling is right on.

Next: Tucson: Containing growth

Borderland

Starting the journey: Riding into Laredo

A statistical picture of life along the border

Austin: The incredible disappearing Slacker

San Antonio: High Times and Low Water

Yturria Land and Cattle and El Canelo Ranch: Where’s the Beef?

Brownsville: Lifeguard on the Rio Grande

McAllen: Fields of dreams

Nightsong in Nuevo Laredo

All roads lead to Crystal City