Skip to main content

New Law Offers New Hope for America's Dirtiest River

Support Provided By
new-river-1-10-28-15-thumb-630x472-98645
n November 2011, workers don protective gear before coming into contact with the New River's water | Photo: Jared Blumenfeld/U.S. EPA

California's border with Baja California is a complex region with unique environmental issues. Our Borderlands series takes a deeper look at this region unified by shared landscapes and friendship, and divided by international politics.

Two hours east of the San Diego-Tijuana coastline, the rock-studded Mexicali Valley hugs both sides of the international border. Its aridity is punctuated by el Rio Nuevo, which originates in Mexicali. Its waters gush north across the border into the United States via Calexico, where it becomes its English-language counterpart: the New River. The New River continues its flow north, then west, where it grows in flow until it eventually discharges into the Salton Sea.

This is a problem.

Because of a confluence of industrial waste, debris, human and animal effluvia, pathogens, and, more recently, the bodies of murder victims, the New River has historically been one of the filthiest rivers in the United States, so polluted that even to test it takes special precautionary clothing and equipment. There's a story told of a man's body found in the river in Mexicali that had been so badly burned that authorities initially investigated it as an arson before discovering that the the chemicals in the water are what had scalded it. True or not, the story indicates just how polluted the New River is.

The river was formed by the same levee failure that created the Salton Sea, which means the river was not created "naturally," untouched by human hands. That means that much like the Salton Sea, the New River has been looked upon as something not necessarily worth saving - despite being part of a naturally biodiverse ecosystem. It's classified as a mere drain in Mexico, not a river at all, and so factories and farms south of the international border continue dumping their waste into it.

new-river-2-10-28-15-thumb-630x472-98647
Bloody effluent from a Mexicali slaughterhouse flows into a New River tributary | Photo: Jared Blumenfeld/U.S. EPA

 

However, the New River's fate is now changing. For the past few years, grassroots groups and local politicians have been working to change the beleaguered waterway's fate with awareness-raising campaigns and cleanup efforts. But are things changing fast enough? The New River has been called an "environmental success story," but while the reappearance of fish and fowl signify good changes, the persistence of the same pesticides, feces, human and animal bodies, and other pollutants that made the New River such a toxic stew for so long should not be ignored.

A.B. 965, a bill authored by first-year Assemblymember Eduardo Garcia and signed into by Governor Jerry Brown in early October, aims to fund health and environmental initiatives around the New River. Garcia, who grew up in the Calexico-Mexicali border region and spent ten years as the Coachella mayor, has made environmental justice a centerpiece of his campaign. Not only does the bill set aside money from environmental fines to -- among other things -- clean up the New River, create park space around it, and re-introduce wildlife, the bill also builds on cross-border cooperation to tackle the sources of pollution.

"It's a work in progress, and we're going to chip away at these issues, because we recognize that one bill doesn't solve the problem," Garcia said. "We're going to build on these legislative efforts to the point that we have the resources that we need to implement [changes] - whether it be the parkway at the New River, or that we have the data [on] air quality impacts so that we can get the money to mitigate those impacts."

On the Mexico side, the state government of Baja California Norte is implementing infrastructure projects to clean up its own wastewater issues in the Mexicali Valley, and Garcia hopes to further strengthen the binational efforts to clean up the river.

"We would love to sit down with the folks in Baja California who are taking the lead on these project," said Garcia. "We have the parkway plan on our end, that could truly transform what you see on the Calexico side, but at the end of the day, really, the focus has to be at the same time what we're doing on the other side of the border to clean up the waters... Otherwise, you've got a beautiful parkway - with contaminated waters still flowing through."

new-river-3-10-28-15-thumb-630x472-98650
The New River just north of the border in Calexico | Photo: Jared Blumenfeld/U.S. EPA

 

It looks like the New River -- once the dirtiest river of its size in the United States-- might actually have a chance to become an environmental success story after all. It could also, perhaps, show that environmental efforts don't always have to focus on naturally formed bodies of water - that flora and fauna can thrive in habitats that are made by people.

There has been a longstanding perspective that the only places truly worth saving are the ones that are are "wild," untouched by human hands. But there's also increased evidence that what we think of as untouched wilderness is actually anthropogenic: the end result of thousands of years of human intervention. The New River may not have formed on its own, but that doesn't mean it isn't natural. It should be treated not as an accident good only for carrying sewage, but as the perfect place to begin mitigating the effects of years of destructive policies.

Support Provided By
Read More
Gray industrial towers and stacks rise up from behind the pitched roofs of warehouse buildings against a gray-blue sky, with a row of yellow-gold barrels with black lids lined up in the foreground to the right of a portable toilet.

California Isn't on Track To Meet Its Climate Change Mandates. It's Not Even Close.

According to the annual California Green Innovation Index released by Next 10 last week, California is off track from meeting its climate goals for the year 2030, as well as reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
A row of cows stands in individual cages along a line of light-colored enclosures, placed along a dirt path under a blue sky dotted with white puffy clouds.

A Battle Is Underway Over California’s Lucrative Dairy Biogas Market

California is considering changes to a program that has incentivized dairy biogas, to transform methane emissions into a source of natural gas. Neighbors are pushing for an end to the subsidies because of its impact on air quality and possible water pollution.
A Black woman with long, black brains wears a black Chicago Bulls windbreaker jacket with red and white stripes as she stands at the top of a short staircase in a housing complex and rests her left hand on the metal railing. She smiles slightly while looking directly at the camera.

Los Angeles County Is Testing AI's Ability To Prevent Homelessness

In order to prevent people from becoming homeless before it happens, Los Angeles County officials are using artificial intelligence (AI) technology to predict who in the county is most likely to lose their housing. They would then step in to help those people with their rent, utility bills, car payments and more so they don't become unhoused.