Bob Filner: “I rise today to tell my colleagues about an incredible situation that is going on in my district in San Diego…”

“I rise today to tell my colleagues about an incredible situation that is going on in my district in San Diego, California. I have running through my district 50 million gallons of raw sewage a day. I doubt that any congressperson in America could say that, 50 million gallons of raw sewage coming through his or her district. This is because of the nature of the geography in southern California and the unfortunate situation that our sister city across the Mexican border, Tijuana, does not have facilities to treat all its sewage, so sewage which is untreated eventually finds its way into the Tijuana River Valley, across my district and then empties into the Pacific Ocean. It is a terrible environmental problem which both countries are trying to solve. I have worked on this problem for over a decade as a member of the San Diego City Council and as a member of this Congress. We found a win-win-win way to deal with this issue that had been plaguing us for 50 years.”