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CHARLIE NEUMAN / Union-Tribune
Lumps of thick, toxic foam choke the New River as they float north into Calexico from Mexicali, Mexico. A byproduct of sewage, farm runoff and industrial wastewater, the foam sometimes blows into the parking lot of a nearby shopping center.

A river of filth flows unchecked


Calexico group advances plan for waste-choked waterway
By Mike Lee
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
June 9, 2005

CALEXICO – Standing at the edge of the New River, Pablo Orozco remembers joking with his friends about the black water that winds through his hometown of Mexicali, across the international border and into the Imperial Valley.

"Try not to smell it," the boys would say.

Otherwise, the open sewer system mostly was ignored in Mexicali as mountains of trash formed in its floodplain. The river was eventually encased in a concrete tomb, which runs for about five miles through the city, to hide the stench and keep people out of the waterway.
The capped canal, however, didn't stem the flow of up to 20 million gallons of waste that flows past Calexico each day. The thick scent of sewage hangs over the west side of this fast-growing farm town in Imperial County.

Now Orozco,director of a citizens action group in Calexico, aims to enclose 3.5 miles of the waterway on the U.S. side. It's part of a proposed $80 million push to limit diseases and economic woes carried by what has been called North America's most polluted river. The package includes a trash screen at the border, water disinfection in Calexico and cleanup of the river bottom.

Despite optimism in Calexico that a short-term fix is near, decades of binational blame shifting and broken promises has left residents worried that a remedy might never arrive. The town of 36,000 enjoys emerging political support, including New River legislation in Sacramento, but the heavily Hispanic community wields little economic or legislative leverage.

"We can't really expect Mexico to bring a final solution because there isn't the culture or the resources to fix it," said Orozco, 26. "So the U.S. should be trying to protect its citizens."

History is not on his side: As far back as the 1950s, Imperial Valley residents complained about the overpowering smell from the slow-moving cesspool. Combined efforts by the U.S. and Mexican governments have made sporadic progress, but despite ongoing sewage-treatment upgrades in Mexico, the river remains a threat.

"No community should have to suffer with this situation," said Javier Alatorre, former mayor of Calexico.


River of sewage
Sewage accounts for roughly 20 percent of the river's flow at the border, where it spills through a breach in the fence separating Mexico from the United States. The rest is farm runoff and industrial wastewater, some of which bypasses an existing treatment plant and another under construction.
The mixture produces thick toxic foam that floats north and sometimes even blows into the parking lot of a nearby shopping center. It also leaves a ring of tarry sludge at the waterline.

Long regarded as a public health hazard, the river violates federal and state standards for a suite of pollutants including bacteria, volatile organic compounds, silt, pesticides and dissolved oxygen.

Those problems are compounded by garbage dumped into the river – appliances, tires and cans that collect a few miles north of the border. Much of the problem starts in Mexico, but storm water and garbage from the U.S. side only make the situation worse.

"It looks solid, but it's all floating," Orozco said as he peered over the river's edge at the sheet of trash.

In Imperial County, where more than one-third of residents lack health insurance, there hasn't been a recent and comprehensive attempt to gather statistics on health problems caused by the New River.

The California Environmental Protection Agency says the waterway's "stew" has been shown to contain heavy metals, pesticides and pathogens that cause tuberculosis, polio, encephalitis and cholera.

This month, Cal EPA is launching an "environmental justice" project to reduce river-related health risks for Calexico. The program will include testing water fowl and fish for contamination, tracking people's illnesses and educating residents about the dangers of the river.


[img[http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050609/images/newriver2.jpg[/img]

In this photo taken by the Border Patrol, illegal immigrants covered their heads with white fabric in an attempt to hide amid the patches of fetid foam that dot the New River.
Tracking health effects might be made even more difficult because each night, dozens of illegal immigrants float the river to the United States, clutching inner tubes and hiding in the foam. After being exposed to any number of diseases, these migrants commonly drift toward food industry jobs in San Diego and Los Angeles counties.
For now, river-related health problems mostly are anecdotal.

On the side of Calexico nearest the river, for instance, air-conditioning technicians have reported heavy corrosion on metal cooling units. They don't see that happening on the other side of town.

Many residents suspect the phenomenon is linked to river toxins. They say the same chemicals are exacerbating breathing problems in a valley where asthma rates already are sky high. Orozco's group, the Calexico New River Committee, is conducting a survey to determine whether that suspicion is true.

"We're breathing all that stuff. You smell it every night," said Jerry Arguelles, 30, who used to live on the river side of town.

While health issues simmer, the river remains an economic drag.

Alatorre, the former mayor, said he tried to recruit developers for outlet stores on the west side of town but that proximity to the waterway spiked Calexico's prospects.


A history of blame
Despite its fight to clean up the New River, Calexico has been snared in bureaucratic barbed wire for decades. At least a dozen laws and treaties apply to the river and at least eight U.S. and Mexican agencies – state, national and international – play a role, though they've sometimes suffered from a lack of overall coordination.
At the regional water quality board in Palm Desert, official Jose Angel said a U.S. facility discharging as much raw sewage as Mexico has into the river would have been fined more than $400 billion over the years.

The board got so fed up with the unchecked pollution that last summer it lashed out with complaint letters to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the International Boundary and Water Commission. It said a 1982 pollution treaty with Mexico has been ignored.

"The river remains basically as polluted now as then," the letter read.

The response was that improvements were in the works, according to the water board.

Similar sewage problems on the Tijuana River led to construction of an international wastewater treatment system on the San Diego-Tijuana border in the late 1990s. It's not the perfect solution, but Angel sees it as proof that border projects can get done with the right amount of legislative influence.

"They don't care about us over here," resident Arguelles said of government officials. "If this was in San Francisco, they would have cleaned it up a long time ago."

Nancy Woo, a top U.S. EPA water official in San Francisco, said New River progress is imminent with major upgrades to Mexicali's sewage system. A new treatment plant, Mexicali II, is expected to be completed by the end of 2006.

At that point, "You are going to have a marked improvement in water quality," Woo said. "You are basically removing 15 million gallons a day of raw sewage."

Woo said improvements have been slowed by rapid growth in Mexicali – approaching 1 million residents – and the expense of adding infrastructure in a developed city.

Even if Mexicali II is completed as planned, experts agree that wastewater will still haunt Calexico.

During a recent tour through Mexicali, Orozco showed why: An 18-inch sewage pipe from a nearby neighborhood poked through the dirt with a straight shot to the New River. Orozco said the city is crisscrossed by such pipes, which bypass treatment plants, and that many factories, including a slaughterhouse, are not connected to the system.


A new vision
With little hope of immediate upgrades in Mexicali, the New River committee was formed in 2001. The group turned its focus to protecting Calexico. Since then, it's gotten some indication that the river's problems are being taken more seriously.
For instance, Cal EPA's designation of the river as an environmental justice project is viewed as a major breakthrough in drawing attention to the waterway.

The citizen committee's vision, promoted from Sacramento to Washington, D.C., includes putting a trash screen at the border, piping the river through Calexico and creating wetlands at the north end of the pipe to act as a natural filter for pollutants.

One version of its proposal includes routing the New River through a beefed-up Calexico wastewater treatment plant. The committee also aims to develop trails and parkland on 300 mostly barren acres nearby in hopes of eventually attracting businesses to the site.

Much of the $80 million tab probably would be footed by the federal government and perhaps California. The committee, which is funded by foundation grants, has no financial support for capital improvements.

What Calexico does have is the backing of state Sen. Denise Ducheny, D-San Diego. Her New River legislation recently passed in the Senate, and it has no known opposition in the Assembly. If the bill becomes law, it would authorize piping for the waterway, an important procedural hurdle in a state that generally prohibits complete enclosure of rivers.

"It is unusual to bury your river and do something on top of it, but ... it could be a real positive project," Ducheny said.

State approval could help Calexico attract money from Congress or future state bond measures. New River committee members also remain hopeful that the International Boundary and Water Commission, which manages treaties along the border, will contribute funds.

Arturo Duran, chief of the commission's U.S. division, visited the New River a few weeks ago and directed his staff to seek solutions. Similar talk has been going on for decades, but commission spokeswoman Sally Spener in El Paso, Texas, said Duran has made the river a top priority since he took office in early 2004.

"For a long time ... the U.S. in general was very hopeful that Mexicali infrastructure improvements would quickly and effectively take care of the problem," Spener said. "Commissioner Duran has said he wants to see what else can be done."

Such statements are viewed with hope and skepticism in Calexico.

"Maybe it's a 10 percent probability that it will happen," Alatorre said of the piping plan. "But what is the option? To give up and not try anything."