After days of chaotic revisions, Congress sent President Joe Biden a stopgap spending bill that includes critical funding for a long-deferred upgrade to the wastewater treatment plant at the U.S.-Mexico border. Biden signed the bill Saturday. The measure, signed shortly after the midnight deadline to avert a government shutdown, includes $250 million for the U.S. International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) — the federal agency responsible for managing the South Bay International Wastewater Treatment Plant in the Tijuana River Valley. For years, the plant has been unable to properly clean Tijuana sewage before releasing it off South County shorelines, forcing repeated beach closures and complaints of health problems by South Bay residents. According to IBWC officials and the San Diego congressional delegation, which pushed to have the funding included in the bill, the money will cover a $200 million shortfall to repair and expand the plant. The total cost of the project, which is expected to take five years to complete, is estimated at $600 million. “This new funding will help repair and improve broken equipment, increase the plant’s capacity and provide stronger environmental protection,” Veolia North America, which operates the South Bay plant on behalf of the IBWC, said Saturday in a statement. “Strengthening the South Bay plant is a major step toward a permanent solution for the region’s enormous problems treating sewage that crosses the border from Mexico, and passing this funding into law will help speed water quality improvements to benefit the entire region.” Many parts of the plant have broken, including treatment tanks responsible for removing solids such as trash, sand and sewage from water. While the federal agency has brought repaired tanks and other equipment online, they have broken again because of unprecedented amounts of polluted flows entering the plant from Mexico. That has left the agency with multiple Clean Water Act violations for releasing wastewater into the Pacific Ocean beyond what it is permitted. Reports of Tijuana sewage leaking over the border into the San Diego region stretch back at least to the 1930s. While significant improvements were made in the 1990s, the Mexican city’s plumbing has not kept pace with population growth. Years of underinvestment in treatment plants in both countries have worsened pollution, leaving people ill with headaches, nausea, respiratory issues and other symptoms. Pollution has also affected wildlife, closed shorelines and hurt local economies. The new funding comes after IBWC leader Maria-Elena Giner told federal officials last year how critically underfunded the treatment plant was and how the agency’s $50 million budget for all its projects across the U.S.-Mexico border would fall severely short. In 2020, Congress allocated $300 million for the plant, but half of that, it was later revealed, was to cover deferred maintenance. The San Diego congressional delegation, with the support of local elected officials and advocacy groups, successfully pushed for an additional $156 million earlier this year. The IBWC broke ground on the repair and expansion project in October, doubling the plant’s capacity to treat 50 million gallons of daily flows. “It is long overdue, and won’t happen overnight, but our community will see the results as these fixes are completed and Mexico also improves its wastewater infrastructure,” Rep. Scott Peters said in a statement. “We must continue to monitor and study how this pollution hurts people in affected communities. I will be zealously monitoring the progress of repairs to ensure we are never in this position again.”