The New River flows north from
Mexico near Cerro Prieto, through the city of Mexicali and into
the United States through the city of Calexico, California,
towards the Salton Sea.
The river channel was created when the Salton Sea formed in 1905
after the Colorado River broke through a series of dikes and
extensive flooding occurred in the Salton Sink.
The New River’s flows are mostly ag runoff and municipal and
industrial discharges. Efforts now focus on cleaning up the
pollution.
California’s shrinking Salton Sea is getting a closer look
scientifically with the state, local air districts, and
community groups examining air, water, and even dust from the
parched shoreline where water was once plentiful. The increased
scrutiny comes as the state has continuously failed to meet
dust suppression and habitat goals set in a 2017 management
plan to restore nearly 30,000 acres of the state’s largest body
of water by 2028. The sea spans Imperial and Riverside counties
near the Mexican border, where disadvantaged communities
breathe some of the nation’s worst air and suffer from high
asthma rates. Chronic nosebleeds are also common.
California remains far behind its targets for addressing
exposed playa around the Salton Sea, according to data released
in the 2021 Salton Sea Management Program annual report.
But state officials expressed optimism in a public
workshop that they are finally beginning to catch up to those
goals. The state was supposed to implement dust suppression
projects or build wetlands habitat across 3,500 acres of
exposed playa by the end of 2020 to tamp down dust that’s
imbued with a century’s worth of salts, pesticides and other
agricultural runoff.
[The Salton Sea is] drying up, spewing harmful dust into the
Imperial Valley’s already badly polluted air. There are
countless stories to be told around the Salton Sea. To me, one
of the most fascinating is about lithium. … I wrote
about the increasingly bright prospects for Salton Sea
lithium extraction in October 2019. Today, I’ve got
several updates on the companies trying to make the Imperial
Valley the first major source of North American lithium
production — including the entrance of some powerful new
players.
California is spending more than $200 million to keep an
unfolding ecological crisis from getting worse. The state wants
to stabilize habitat along the southern bank of the Salton Sea,
the state’s largest lake. That is good news for nearby
residents concerned about their health, but the restoration
could also affect everyone who draws water from the Colorado
River. At issue is the wide swaths of exposed lakebed
that have been uncovered as the thirsty lake’s water evaporates
in the desert air.
A bill aimed at addressing pollution along the U.S.- Mexico
border and improving water quality in the Tijuana and New
rivers was introduced Wednesday. The Border Water Quality
Restoration and Protection Act would designate the
Environmental Protection Agency as the lead agency coordinating
federal, state and local agencies to build and maintain
infrastructure projects aimed at reducing pollution along the
border. It would also require the EPA and other agencies to
identify a list of priority projects and would authorize the
EPA to accept and distribute federal, state, and local funds to
build, operate and maintain those projects.
California is spending more than $200 million to keep an
unfolding ecological crisis from getting worse. The state wants
to stabilize habitat along the southern bank of the Salton Sea,
the state’s largest lake. That is good news for nearby
residents concerned about their health, but the restoration
could also affect everyone who draws water from the Colorado
River. At issue is the wide swaths of exposed lakebed that have
been uncovered as the thirsty lake’s water evaporates in the
desert air. The lake bottom is typically a deep layer of fine
silt. When covered by water, it poses no risk. But once exposed
to the air, and whipped up by the region’s strong winds, the
dust becomes a major health risk.
California’s desert is littered with remnants of broken dreams
— hidden ghost towns, abandoned mines and rusty remains of
someone’s Big Idea. But nothing looms larger on an abandoned
landscape than the Salton Sea, which languishes in an
overlooked corner of the state. The water shimmers and broils
in the desert like a rebuke: born of human error, made worse by
100 years of neglect and pollution. California’s largest lake
is also one of its worst environmental blights, presenting a
problem so inverted that its toxic legacy intensifies as its
foul water disappears…. The blue-ribbon commission
members, appointed by state agencies, legislators and the
governor, hold
their first meeting today…
California is poised to begin the first major restoration
project at the Salton Sea. The state is investing more than
$200 million in a project that will create flooded ponds and
other habitats on the exposed lakebed at the southern edge of
the lake.
U.S. Reps. Raul Ruiz, D-Palm Desert, and Juan Vargas,
D-San Diego reintroduced a bill this week that is aimed at
cleaning up the New River, a highly polluted waterway
originating near Mexicali, Mexico that flows
north, emptying into the Salton Sea. The bill, HR491,
would direct the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to create
an organization to be called the California New River
Restoration Program, which would coordinate funding and cleanup
projects.
Construction began this week on a 4,110-acre wetlands project
on the Salton Sea’s playa near the mouth of the highly polluted
New River, the California Department of Natural Resources
announced Wednesday. Called the Species Conservation Habitat
Project, the $206.5 million plan will build ponds and wetlands
along the small delta to provide wildlife habitat and suppress
dust. The final design includes 340 additional acres of
coverage as compared to older projections, and work led by
Kiewit Infrastructure West Co. is expected to be finished by
2024.
Through a variety of panel discussions, presentations and a
showcase of student research, the Re:Border conference is
exploring how San Diego State University and its regional
partners can contribute to innovative solutions for
water-related challenges in the transborder region.
A bi-national conference at San Diego State University was
aimed at analyzing water resources in the Baja California and
San Diego border region where challenges include cross-border
pollution and water scarcity… Experts at the Reborder 2019
conference discussed ways to improve regional access to “a
secure and reliable water supply” through wastewater treatment
and desalination.
An increasing number of solutions to California and Arizona’s
long-term water problems now involve Mexico. Some of the ideas
are seemingly far-fetched, like a pipeline to bring water from
the Gulf of California to the Salton Sea in Imperial County.
Some are already happening, like Mexico agreeing to reduce its
water use in the event of a Colorado River shortage. … That
stands in contrast not only to recent threats by President
Donald Trump to shut down the border, but some existing water
projects.
Officials met in Imperial Beach Friday to discuss the sewage
pollution that continues to plague South Bay shorelines —
shuttering beaches more than 100 days every year. The event was
billed as an “inaugural dialogue,” which in the future will
include a host of other binational issues, including climate
change and commerce.
Mexican and American officials met in Mexico City this week to
talk about fixing a costly set of problems that have sprung up
along the border: failing sewer systems that send raw sewage
spilling into rivers. … Roberto Salmón, Mexico’s commissioner
of the International Boundary and Water Commission, said border
cities from Tijuana to Matamoros need a total of about 10
billion pesos, or $520 million, “just to bring the sanitary
systems up to speed, to correct the problems.”
Several San Diego political and business leaders headed to
Mexico City Sunday to advocate for free trade and increased
infrastructure spending in Tijuana to stop sewage spills from
polluting local beaches.
Tom Steyer, the billionaire philanthropist and Democratic Party
donor, took a break from trying to impeach President Donald
Trump on Friday to visit the eastern Coachella Valley and learn
about the water quality issues plaguing the region’s residents.
The San Diego County Water Authority’s General Manager notified
the region’s water board on Wednesday that she is retiring.
Maureen Stapleton has held the top job at the agency for more
than two decades. She led the Water Authority through the
complicated settlement negotiations surrounding the Colorado
River. Stapleton also encouraged projects like the Carlsbad
Desalination plant as a way to diversify the region’s water
supply.
During the past two decades, the federal government’s spending
on sewer projects along the U.S.-Mexico border has declined
dramatically. The decrease in funding has left a long list of
needed sewer fixes unbuilt, while raw sewage and industrial
pollution have continued to pour into the New River, the
Tijuana River and other rivers that flow across the border.
Now, Congress has started to put more money toward combating
water pollution on the border.
There may be more in the sewage-tainted water that regularly
spills over the border from Tijuana than many San Diegans
realize. The cross-border pollution also contains potentially
dangerous industrial and agricultural chemicals, according to a
draft report compiled by U.S. Customs and Border Protection
that was circulated to officials throughout the region on
Wednesday.
For generations, residents of the Southern California border
town of Calexico watched with trepidation as their river turned
into a cesspool, contaminated by the booming human and
industrial development on the other side of the border in
Mexico. As Washington debates spending billions to shore
up barriers along the 2,000-mile southwest border, many
residents in California’s Imperial Valley feel at least some of
that money could be spent to address the region’s public health
threats.
For decades, the New River has flowed north across the
U.S.-Mexico border carrying toxic pollution and the stench of
sewage. Now lawmakers in Washington and Sacramento are pursuing
legislation and funding to combat the problems. “I feel very
optimistic that we’re going to be able to get some things done
on the New River issue,” said Assemblymember Eduardo
Garcia.
The Río Nuevo flows north from Mexico into the United States,
passing through a gap in the border fence. The murky
green water reeks of sewage and carries soapsuds, pieces of
trash and a load of toxic chemicals from Mexicali, a city
filled with factories that manufacture products from
electronics to auto parts.
The river is so foul that rumors swirl about two-headed turtles
and three-eyed fish. If you fall in, locals joke, you might
sprout a third arm. So go the stories about the New River,
whose putrid green water runs like a primordial stew from
Mexico’s sprawling city of Mexicali through California’s
Imperial Valley.
California’s little-known New River has been called one of North
America’s most polluted. A closer look reveals the New River is
full of ironic twists: its pollution has long defied cleanup, yet
even in its degraded condition, the river is important to the
border economies of Mexicali and the Imperial Valley and a
lifeline that helps sustain the fragile Salton Sea ecosystem.
Now, after decades of inertia on its pollution problems, the New
River has emerged as an important test of binational cooperation
on border water issues. These issues were profiled in the 2004
PBS documentary Two Sides of a River.
