Paul Stachelek

Industrial waste, billows of foam, and human feces abound in the New River.

The New River, one of the longest year-round rivers in Southern California, flows green and murky through the heart of the Imperial Valley on its three-day journey from Mexicali, Mexico, to the brackish Salton Sea, a lake with no outlet. The New River is reputed to be the most polluted and lethal river in California.

Mexicali's population soared from 6,200 in 1920, to 64,701 in 1950, to more than 500,000 in 1974.

Paul Stachelek

In December 1986, CBS’s 60 Minutes suggested the New River could be the filthiest river on the planet. Early this past October, Governor Pete Wilson officially declared the New River a disaster. In fact, this was just another in a series of similar pronouncements that date back at least to the 1940s, when the New River first began to attract attention as a major source of pollution and disease.

In small pockets of still water, gelatinously clear, the water is tinted a urinous lime green.

Paul Stachelek

At the same time Wilson was speaking out on the New River, commissioners of the International Boundary and Water Commission —Narendra Gunaji from the United States and J. Arturo Herrera Solis of Mexico — signed Minute 288, called by some the most ambitious and comprehensive binational New River cleanup resolution to date. In an attempt to spell out a final solution to the problem.

Tires, broken commodes, and plastic sacks of trash pepper the banks.

Paul Stachelek

Minute 228 suggests improvements and additions to the Mexicali sewer system. Carefully worded to yield sovereignty of the project to Mexico, the commission’s statement suggested that the proper role of the U.S. is to offer financial assistance. Showing his faith in this latest agreement, Gunaji has promised to dunk himself in the New River in 1995.

The New River Valley can be seen clearly, where it passes under the elevated channel of the All-American Canal.

Paul Stachelek

At a ceremony commemorating the signing, on the shores of the New River, the Imperial County Board of Supervisors presented Gunaji with a fluorescent-green bathing suit.

One recommendation is that septic tank haulers stop dumping near the river.

Paul Stachelek

Industrial waste, billows of foam, and human feces abound in the New River. Horror stories are told about paint being peeled from submerged trucks.

Lupita’s father begins a story about the time it rained so hard, the mud was waist-high. Mattresses had to be elevated atop tires stacked higher than the water line.

Paul Stachelek

Ammonia, chloroform, and boron show up at high levels in routine water-quality grab samples near the border at Calexico. Testing agencies have detected volatile organic compounds like benzene, acetone, and toluene. Imperial County Public Health employees, who regularly monitor the New River, have detected at least 28 viruses known to cause disease in humans.

In 1985 in the New River backwaters, 42 percent of the mosquitoes were carrying encephalitis.

Paul Stachelek

They’ve encountered typhus, cholera, encephalitis, and all three polio viruses. The average fecal coliform count in the New River is around 500,000 colonies per 100 ml of water. Testers have found fecal coliform as high as 35 million colonies per 100 ml. The allowable limit for non-contact recreational use is a relatively infinitesimal 600. A member of the U.S. Geological Survey office says they have stopped monitoring the New River because of the danger to their personnel.

In the midst of it all, the New River flows, the pumps break down, the pipe crumbles.

Paul Stachelek

Periodically, the California Regional Water Quality Control Board monitors the New River for 12-hour stretches. Current observation logs typically resemble this one, from 1986:

• 1045-1230: 15 tires floated by
• 1155: dead chicken observed in river
• 1400-1450: 18 tires floated by
• 0700-1700: considerable masses of suspended sludge worms observed. Periodic refuse including fruit peelings, condoms, animal entrails, greasy solids, bottles and cans, some foam.

In Mexico, from its source 10 miles south of the border, the New River functions as nothing less than the waste water disposal system for the entire city of Mexicali. A crosshatching of ditches and canals, teeming with sewage and industrial waste water, feed into the New River Valley that bisects the city. In this sprawling municipality, the capital of Baja California Norte, the population exceeds one million as more housing developments, factories, mini-malls, and even a new Price Club are constructed, rapidamente. Very American.

Mexicali’s sewage load is estimated to be over 35 million gallons per day. Roughly 60 percent of the population is sewer-connected. On a rare good day, almost one-third, 11 million gallons minimum, of Mexicali’s raw sewage and industrial effluent flows untreated, north across the border. This number increases dramatically when the pumps break down on the Mexican side, forcing messy bypasses and diversions.

When Mexicali was founded around the turn of the century, the city’s first sewage system emptied straight into the New River. It took more than 50 years for the city to begin to build a sewage collection network, and this work, begun in 1962, was not completed for an additional 14 years. Infrastructure overload demanded the construction of these sewage treatment facilities in Mexicali, where the population had soared from 6,200 in 1920, to 64,701 in 1950, to more than 500,000 in 1974. And this same explosive population growth rendered the system inadequate even before it was completed.

Running through the center of Mexicali, the cliff-like banks of the New River channel etch a 200-yard-wide no-man’s land, a swath conspicuously void of any human activity, mile after mile. No road runs alongside, no buildings face the river directly. Yet scattered along the eastern banks of the river, beginning near the landfill transfer station south of town, small shanty neighborhoods have sprouted up. Amidst piles of rubble, drab collections of makeshift homes stand together shakily, fashioned from plywood, cardboard, corrugated metal, irregular panels of Sheet rock, and wood scraps. Nestled against the edge of the New River channel, these temporary nodes of humanity— some with electricity and hand-painted street signs, some with no running water and no names — creep as close as 40 feet to the river bank. Garden hoses issue household waste water toward the channel, away from the row of shacks closest to the river.

At the edge of Colonia Aguas Leguas, a large plywood outhouse perches on the river’s edge. Across the dirt road stands Mario Contreras Ruiz, beneath the carport of his one-room wooden house. His front yard is dusty and littered with exploded tires, blocks of jackhammered concrete, gutted car seats, rusting mattress frames, and the husk of an old refrigerator. Close by on the low bluff, he explains, once stood the notorious slaughterhouse that fed the New River animal skins and blood. And all this land around him used to be a dump.

Contreras’s six-year-old daughter Lupita taps playfully with a stick on a cinder block in her father’s shadow. He cannot afford to send her to school. The books, the uniform, the pencils— too expensive, he says. Lupita continues her game, first skipping then hopping on one leg. Behind her stands another heap of rubble surrounding a ditch that collects the neighbors’ wash water.

Lupita’s father begins a story about the time it rained so hard, the mud was waist-high. Mattresses had to be elevated atop tires stacked higher than the water line. He speaks of Marta, a PRI party official with an office in the Governor’s Palace in Mexicali. She is their advocate. In exchange for votes, she provides favors. Once she sent buses that took them all to a rally for Mexican president Roberto Salinas de Gortari, where they cheered in exchange for a meal. Now he cannot find a decent job. There is nothing but hard labor, construction. The pay is too low, he says. Only five American dollars for a full day’s work. And there are always the rumors. Everyone here worries they will soon be moved out by the government, displaced. Have we heard anything about that?

Mario A. Gonzalez is the amiable chief of topography at the municipal offices of Ayuntamiento de Mexicali. Eagerly, Gonzalez and his partner agree to lead a tour of the New River. Unfolding a huge blue photocopied map of the city, Gonzalez directs the excursion. “Turn left, quickly, here!” The truck lurches off the asphalt onto a dirt frontage road that parallels a row of plywood and cinder-block homes, another colonia backed up to the riverbed. Behind the rows of houses, the dry brown expanse of the New River channel appears. Here in the middle of the channel, below a line of green scrub vegetation, flows an even greener river no more than 20 feet wide. Tires, broken commodes, and plastic sacks of trash pepper the banks. And the ubiquitous message, seen across town on bumper stickers, on metal signs, painted on posts and plywood placards: No Tire Basura (Don’t Throw Trash).

Gonzalez points the way through the line of houses into an open area strewn with acres of household garbage. Across the river, a large black-and-white sign, in Spanish: “Anyone caught throwing trash will receive a fine equal to 100 days’ minimum wage.” This stretch of right-of-way, through which pass the main power lines for the city, falls under the jurisdiction of the federal government and the military.

A cluster of hardscrabble shanties appears, another small rudimentary colonia. Old tires hold down the metal roofs. These are the paracaidistas (“parachutists,” squatters), Gonzalez says. He takes this moment to describe the latest efforts by the municipal government to clean up the New River Valley. A three-stage plan has been initiated, starting closest to the border. Extensive dredging has begun. Rusted and wrecked cars have been extracted from the river by the dozens. The Coppel family, famous in Mexico for their chain of department stores, has purchased much of the available land in anticipation of proposed commercial zones.

Gonzalez pauses when asked about the squatters. “They will be relocated,” he contends, quietly. “There are agencies that manage these things.” Seeking to avoid a sensitive subject, he begins to speak reverently about his department. Gonzalez explains that the Ayuntamiento offices stay open all day long now. “Not like in the old days, with siestas and such,” he says. “We have our clients to serve during those hours.” His voice conveys satisfaction, the clarity of confidence.

Gonzalez continues the tour. The paved road reappears beyond a collection of dusty hovels close to the site of the old slaughterhouse. It has been moved farther south along the highway to San Felipe. The people complained. It was too much. On the other side of the road the river swells into Lake Xochimilco near a huge garbage separation and pre-recycling center thick with trucks and trash. This is the site of the old main city dump, since moved 25 kilometers south.

Gonzalez says a few years back, this used to be a recreation area. Now the lake is rimmed by a few small manufacturing plants. PEMEX has posted yellow warning signs complete with black skulls and crossbones. Gonzalez orders a stop not far away to view a large drainage ditch that flows through the city, east to west, from an agricultural zone. The smell of rank sewage cuts through the cool air-conditioned atmosphere in the truck. A hundred yards from the road, straddling the ditch, stands a gutted factory that once cast aluminum ingots. Gonzalez gestures, holding his nose, describing the oppressive smells. Mas fuerte. Again, the people complained. They couldn’t stand it anymore, and the factory was shut down.

Another lake, a few kilometers later, a bulge in the New River, actually: Lake Mexico. An opaque green canal and a double-rutted dirt road lead into the flat land around the lake. Salt cedars droop around a huge dumping ground; water heater carcasses, stripped refrigerators, hundreds of old tires, and piles of plastic sacks full of trash line the river. Three fishermen toss hand-lines into the avocado-colored water.

Gonzalez points farther south, upstream, where recreation is still officially sanctioned. The Campestre Golf and Country Club lies in the distance, adjacent to the river at the other end of Lake Mexico. A man on a bicycle inspects the mounds of trash, searching for anything useful, redeemable, functional.

Once back on the highway, returning to the center of town, Gonzalez talks about the rash of new housing developments in Mexicali. There the sewage flows underground, through a pipe instead of in open channels. Those homes have running water, of course; but Gonzalez’s assistant is quick to add, “Pero no potable. ’’ You can’t drink it.

During the famous flood of 1905, Colorado River runoff crashed through the Imperial Valley, cutting a wide barranca across the border and forming the Salton Sea. The resulting Salton Basin includes three valleys: Mexicali, Imperial, and Coachella. The average basin elevation is 226 feet below sea level, only about 50 higher than the lowest point in Death Valley. The Salton Sea today covers about 370 square miles. The New River drains into the Salton Sea near its southernmost point, between two national wildlife refuges. The river flow here is more than 700 cubic feet per second.

James Miller, a volunteer for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, says visitors to the area who choose to swim in the Salton Sea should think twice if they have cuts or open sores “because of all the tetanus and cholera flowing in.”

The Alamo River, which runs parallel to the New River and also flows north through Mexicali unchecked and untreated, empties into the Salton Sea about 10 miles north of the New River, just beyond Red Hill and the refuge headquarters. On one of the maps printed by the Department of the Interior, distributed at the refuge, this Alamo River delta is designated a “Hazard Tract.”

In 1907, the salinity level of the Salton Sea was measured at 3,648 parts per million, and rainbow trout were abundant. By 1979 the salinity level had increased tenfold, to 39,000 parts per million, the result of evaporation and agricultural and industrial runoff carried by the feeder rivers. None of the original freshwater species of fish remained, and the Salton Sea was restocked with saltwater varieties in the 1950s. Today it is ten percent saltier than the Pacific Ocean, unsuitable even for the sea bass and corvina.

Along the rocky and trash-strewn beaches near the deltas of the New and Alamo rivers lie two major bird-watching sites. Visitors tread the wide trails, with scopes, binoculars, and high-powered camera lenses in hand, traversing a Venusian landscape with half a dozen geothermal plants flashing steam in the background. “Did you see anything worthwhile?” an older gentleman asks, eating his lunch at a picnic table with his wife. A veteran watcher, his binocular pouch emblazoned with a fresh Audubon Society patch, declares flatly, “Not today.”

In 1775, the Spanish explorer Juan Bautista de Anza undertook his famous journey from Yuma to San Francisco. On his way through the Imperial Valley, in early December of that year, Anza described the New River area as “a deep arroyo which offered nothing except an abundance of firewood.” Anza’s name has been given to the two-lane road that runs cast and west through the Imperial County town of Calexico, very close to the border station at Mexicali.

Beside a small Vons shopping center in Calexico, down the street from the methadone clinic and across Anza Road from the United Farm Workers offices, the New River now offers an abundance of swiftly moving chunks of feces and fluffy mounds of white foam. The water moves fast here; the average flow is well over 300 cubic feet per second. The fastest-flowing parts of the river at this point take on a deep-ocean jade color, even though the depth can’t be more than a few feet. In small pockets of still water, gelatinously clear, the water is tinted a urinous lime green. A small black duck bounces in for a landing and disappears behind a clump » of reeds just below a sign advertising “Future Home of Los Alamos Wholesale Center,” a proposed 62,000-square-foot commercial zone that is now nothing more than a vacant lot butt-up against a long stretch of rusty brown border fence.

Twenty yards from the international border, the river receives a rushing tributary. From the south, green water glides steadily northward. From the west, swift-moving white foamy water crashes through a mesh fence. This is the water that has been pumped out of the city of Mexicali to oxidation lagoons on the southwest side of town, where it has then been released to flow north and then east along the border, before it turns north again at this point.

A Border Patrol agent cruises by in his Bronco. He describes this riverbed as a popular site, that he has spotted immigrants riding past on inner tubes or plastic milk jugs lashed together. “Sometimes the smell is so bad here,” he explains, “that I just have to drive away. It’s unbearable.” Before leaving, he adds, “I see a lot of people writing stories about the New River. But nothing ever gets done. Nothing.”

Ed Riley, intelligence agent for the Border Patrol, echoes the fact that the New River provides popular transportation for illegals. Back in 1986, he regularly witnessed four or five groups of 25 to 30 persons each floating past on inner-tube rafts. On this same stretch of river, the Imperial County health department has isolated dozens of microorganisms that can cause any number of deadly diseases. “Our agents won’t go in after (the immigrants},” Riley says. “So they make a game out of it. If the agent approaches them from one side, they climb out on the other. When the agent drives around to the other side, they jump in again and go back across.” Sometimes, Riley continues, smugglers who are captured will spray a mouthful of New River water on an agent.

Imperial Irrigation District employees have spotted entire families of Southeast Asian immigrants swimming in the New River. These same IID personnel who work along the river — surveyors, for example — are required to take a full series of immunization shots for cholera, typhoid fever, and the like, every six months. Did any of the immigrant families die? According to Dr. Kenneth Tittle, former Imperial County health officer, “We would give them a gallon of alkaline solution and a general antibiotic and send them on their way. They were okay. ”The smell at the Calexico crossing is palpable, truly stomach-turning. Back around to the north, about half a mile, the New River takes a slight turn westward; the river’s channel is strikingly evident, affirming the earth-moving power of the floodwaters of 1905. Just above the wide sunbaked arroyo lie the edges of at least three new housing developments. Music plays, children cavort, the neighbors are out washing their cars, and a few yard sales and garage parties are in progress.

Among these small stucco homes, many heavily laden with Halloween decorations and wrought-iron window bars, the Imperial County Air Pollution Control District maintains an air monitoring station. From this site, next to a fire station, the New River Valley can be seen clearly, where it passes under the elevated channel of the All-American Canal, which carries irrigation water from the Colorado River into the dry valleys. Bright green vegetation marks the river’s course where it eventually dumps itself into the Salton Sea three days and 60 miles from the border crossing.

Running west out of Mexicali is Highway 2, the only road to Tecate and Tijuana. It also leads to the sewage oxidation lagoons that handle much of the city’s waste water. This sewage is pumped in, since the lagoons are well off the path of the northbound New River. The smell hits well before the sign appears. A series of new motels have been built along the highway, all of them with hidden, walled-in parking lots. One motel appears ominously bunker-like, without windows, painted dark gray and adorned with a hand-painted sign announcing “Habitaciones Matrimoniales” for 16 U.S. dollars. The odor intensifies. A roadside canal runs green and turbid. Atop a canal bridge, next to a sign proclaiming the sewage treatment facility, a trio of young men scrub down a semi-truck with water carried up in buckets from the canal.

From here, another smaller canal runs north, leading to the lagoons. A little girl plays along a plank resting over the water, not far from the outlet of the lagoon complex. The smell is nearly overpowering. At the outlet, effluent streams down a trough, north, where a baby-elephant-sized mound of foam rests against a canal gate. This water is supposed to have settled here in this series of 14 terraced ponds for 20 days, but pumps at the outlet were not working and appeared not to have worked for some time. The gauges on the Siemens electronic monitoring equipment had been smashed and the line from the power pole broken.

The lagoons cover several hundred acres, putrid and still. Coots and tiny ducks sprint along the water, leaving wakes that appear uncommonly thick. Feces accumulates in the corners, grisly white water streaks the edges, and clumps of reptilian green scum clog the shallows. The most dreadful water rests in the easternmost pond, the only one equipped with floating aeration pumps, none of which were in operation. There are flow gates in the sluices but no sign the lagoons are tended. A two-story cinder-block station reigns over the complex, but it is locked up, gutted, to all appearances abandoned.

The sewage collection and treatment systems along the border, in Mexicali, Tijuana, and Nogales, are considered showcases, and Mexican officials come to see what what their border cities have accomplished. According to Rick Smith, at the Yuma office of the International Boundary and Water Commission, the U.S. often comes across as too rough with their Mexican counterparts, “who take valid offense at our attitudes toward their lower standards.” Smith continues, “There are [millions] of people in Mexico City with no sewage treatment at all. Most cities in Mexico, if they do collect sewage, just dump it without any treatment whatsoever.”

South of the city center, industrial parks and impressive plants are sprouting up: Kenworth trucks, Baxter pharmaceuticals, the Sabritas factory that produces all of Taco Bell’s taco shells. Here, also, stands the old Quimica Organica pesticide manufacturing plant, which was ordered to relocate last year. In 1983, the water quality board initiated a sub rosa investigation of the New River watershed and documented toxic waste discharges and alarmingly high levels of carcinogens. The drainage ditch alongside Quimica Organica still appears ominous. Inside the plant there is some activity amid a tableaux of corrosion, low-tech pipe arrays, and rusted equipment. Next door, across the drainage ditch, lies the Conasupo vegetable oil plant. The water quality board tapped them as another heavy polluter. Row upon row of huge storage tanks, many of them labeled “Manteca Vegetal" or “Diesel,” extend along the drain. The water turns progressively darker until — as it skirts new government-sponsored housing developments — it turns black.

Directly across the highway from Quimica Organica stands the brand-new Vitrio glass factory. The main gymnasium-sized facility is clean and light-brown fresh; the outlying offices and guard station are done in matching stucco with tile roofs and arched windows. The drainage ditch here flows east to west, lime green.

At intervals new open pipes jut out from the ditch bank next to new concrete steps that lead into the bottom of the ditch. Muck congeals thick and green at one outfall, surrounding a rotten brown metal barrel. This ditch extends east about 300 yards, draining into a larger north-south trench about 12 feet deep and 30 feet wide, lined with layers of refuse packed down hard.

The odor of rot is piercing and the water runs sickly green, surrounded by mattresses, dog turds, buried tires. Where the dirt road passes over, this water streams into a large pipe, at the mouth of which lies a layer of basketball-sized rocks and discarded plastic jugs, sun-bleached and colorless, their shapes nearly indistinguishable from one another, conjoined by a thin layer of dusty mud. A local transit bus pounds across the ditch, groaning past plywood and cinder-block homes. Here, alongside the trench, horses are penned, hay bales are stacked, card players in tank tops drink beer under a carport. Salt cedars droop all along this residential road — Avenida Salsipuedes (“Leave If You Are Able”).

Reyes Contreras lives in a sturdy home between the trash ditch and a bile green irrigation canal. He is friendly, forthcoming. This place is not so bad, he says, except when it rains. Kids sometimes play in the ditch. “Some people even drink from that canal,” he says. Down the road, a bent green metal sign surrounded by household garbage declares, once again, No Tire Basura.

A bit farther west, about 50 yards from the Contreras house, lie the Gonzalez Ortega sewage treatment lagoons. These are similar in form and function to the larger facility near Highway 2. A small empty brick house rests in the middle of acres of square ponds. Mexican officials admit these settling lagoons are overtaxed and grossly inefficient.

It was in the 1940s that the New River sewage problem became so intense that federal aid was requested from Washington. As the problem grew more extreme, the two countries began discussing plans for a proposed joint sewage treatment facility.

A water-rights treaty was signed with Mexico in 1944, binding the two governments to work toward the resolution of health and sanitation problems along the border. This treaty, written in purple legalese, begins in a lofty promising tone, proclaiming that the two governments are “animated by the sincere spirit of cordiality and friendly cooperation which happily governs the relations between them.”

The International Boundary Commission had been created through an earlier treaty in 1889; in the 1944 treaty, this organization was expanded and renamed the International Boundary and Water Commission. The commission is directed by the U.S. Department of State and the Mexican Secretariat of Foreign Relations. The U.S. Section of the Boundary and Water Commission is also responsible to a number of congressional acts.

Along with the Mexican section, the commission is charged with following through on the provisions of existing water treaties between the two countries. Issues of concern include preservation of the existing boundary along with water distribution, flood control, water storage and utilization, improvement of water quality, and sanitation measures.

By 1950, both the International Boundary and Water Commission and the United States Congress documented the range of health dangers presented by the New River. A bill was passed in 1950 authorizing the U.S. Secretary of State to discuss plans and work out the construction of a “sanitation project” for both Calexico and Mexicali. Despite all manner of diplomacy and legal actions, the two countries failed to accomplish anything at all until the early 1960s.

In 1961, odors and excessive sewage galvanized residents in the Imperial Valley into action once again; they demanded that Mexicali build a sewage treatment facility. Repeatedly the Mexican government assured the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Section of the boundary and water commission that construction would begin in 1962. According to the January 19, 1963 edition of the Imperial Valley Press, "Construction is scheduled to begin in early February on a sewage disposal system for Mexicali which should end contamination of New River and the Salton Sea in 18 to 24 months.”

Then, along the Arizona side of the Colorado River, the Wellton-Mohawk drainage issue flared; Mexico complained of excessive salinity from Colorado River water. More than 7,000 acres of Mexican farmland were destroyed and more than 500 Mexican farmers were abandoning their land each year. This problem was not satisfactorily resolved until 1973, after Minute 242 of the boundary and water commission was signed and the U.S. built a desalting plant near Yuma.

As the U.S. worked toward a solution to the Wellton-Mohawk problem, Mexico resumed construction of the Mexicali sewage treatment works, ultimately completing the project in 1976.

Mexicali’s completed sewage system was built at a cost of six million dollars. A network of pipes and pumps carry the sewage to the oxidizing ponds west of the city. Ideally a 25-day settling period constitutes treatment, whereupon the water is then either pumped south into the Gulf of California or dumped into the New River. However, this system has a history of breaking down, and it has seldom met its operating expectations. Ironically, in 1976, the year the system was completed, a hurricane struck the Imperial Valley region and an earthquake ripped through Mexicali. These natural disasters led to an essentially complete breakdown of the system.

In May of 1978, the water quality board placed as its top priority the control of sewage entering the state from Mexico. In June, the Mexicali sewage system experienced another major breakdown. The following month. Senator Alan Cranston claimed that 70 percent of Mexicali sewage was streaming untreated across the border, and he urged the Department of State to take decisive action. Also in July, the California Department of Health Services recommended that the New River be posted as a health hazard; by the end of 1978, the signs went up, where they remain to this day.

By the end of 1978, Dr. Lee Cottrell, the Imperial County health director, had managed to bring national media attention to the New River problem. In response to this pressure, the governor of Baja California, Roberto de la Madrid, assured Representative Clair Burgener that the New River would be cleaned “by the end of the month.” At an emergency meeting of the water quality board in December, Dr. Cottrell called de la Madrid a liar.

A massive petition drive in the Imperial Valley ensued. More than 3,000 names were signed to the following statement;

“We are appalled by reports of raw sewage, dead animals and filth in our New River. For too long, federal and state authorities have ignored this problem. The New River is a hazard to the health of Imperial County residents. We want action taken to correct this problem.”

In February 1979, President Carter met with President Lopez Portillo in Mexico City. The issue of the New River was discussed and a joint communique was issued, instructing the boundary and water commission “to make immediate recommendations for further progress toward a permanent solution to the sanitation of waters along the border.” The commission clarified these goals in Minute 261. In August of the following year, Minute 264 was signed in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, by officials of the commission, promising to eliminate all discharges of untreated domestic and industrial wastes by July 1982. Ironically, Ciudad Juarez, a city of more than 800,000 people in 1980, had no sewage treatment facilities whatsoever. In comparison, Mexicali’s sewage system was a model for Mexican border communities.

Arguing the New River pollution issue at this time, Mexican officials asserted that tpp priority was not given to Mexicali since it was better off than many Mexican cities. More than half its residents were sewer-connected, they claimed. In addition, their argument continued, the New River was not used for any agricultural, municipal, or industrial purpose, nor has it caused any documented health problems. And then there was the continuing salinity problem. The high salt content of Colorado River water delivered to Mexico was still exacting damage in Mexicali, while the New River, they claimed, was not damaging anything. Frustrated Imperial Valley residents countered by offering dramatic solutions of their own, including a suggestion to dam the New River at the border and force its flow back into Mexicali.

But the New River sewage problems continued, more or less unabated, until 1983, when President Reagan and President Miguel de la Madrid met in La Paz, Raja California, to discuss once again water-pollution and sewage issues. This time, the U.S. EPA and the complementary Mexican agency, SEDUE (now called SEDESOL), were instructed to address border sanitation, air pollution, and hazardous-waste disposal.

Attempting to mount additional concern. Senator Pete Wilson testified before the water quality board in 1983, explaining that the New River situation was most urgent, that it should be resolved quickly. Yet he was just as quick to admit, “There is no simple solution to this problem. It will require further study, hearings, negotiations, legislation, and no doubt federal funds.... I cannot tell you in all honesty that a solution is close at hand. I can tell you, however, that by working together with the State Department, the State of California, and Congress, an optimistic solution will be found.”

The field survey of water quality in the New River watershed, led by Phil Gruenberg of the water quality board in the summer of 1983, was not authorized by the Mexican government. In fact, the Mexican section of the boundary and water commission threatened to file a diplomatic complaint. They backed off, however, upon realizing their action would draw unwanted attention to the problem. In this investigation, initiated primarily because both sides were denying the extent of pollution problems, Gruenberg recommended a 12-point plan for cleaning up the New River in Mexico.

Some of these recommendations have been addressed, such as the relocations of the Quimica Organica pesticide plant, the Planta Leobardo Lechuga Cruz slaughterhouse, and the Mexicali dump. Nonetheless, a truly massive effort would be required to satisfy all of them, and most of them remain unsolved. Other recommendations in the report: the main sewage pumping plants in Mexicali must, under no circumstances, bypass any raw sewage into the New River; septic tank haulers must stop dumping; and, industrial waste must be segregated from domestic waste, to be treated separately.

Within the 10 years following Gruenberg’s investigation, the cyclical pattern of vows and schemes for New River contamination cleanup has persisted. On January 9, 1984, U.S. Senate Joint Resolution 38 called for the declaration of the river as a public hazard, requesting the State Department and the EPA to provide funds for cleanup of the New River watershed. That same year, Dr. Cottrell declared that only 40 percent of Mexicali residents were sewer-connected. He also described the ironic plight of the city of Calexico, across the border from Mexicali: recent federal regulations forced Calexico to spend millions of dollars to treat New River sewage, whereupon that treated sludge was dumped back into the river flowing north upstream.

The state legislature introduced two bills in 1985, intended to address the problem of pollution at the international border: AB 1012 called for $150 million for cleanup facilities, but it stalled in the Senate; AB 4309 sought to establish an agency to deal exclusively with New River and Tijuana River problems, but it was vetoed by Governor Deukmejian.

In the spring of 1985, the Red Hill Marina on the Salton Sea was posted with warnings due to a 200-fold increase in fecal-coliform counts. Later that same year, Cottrell accused the boundary and water commission of providing more harm than help, out of a “fear of offending Mexico.” He also reported in 1985 that in the New River backwaters, 42 percent of the mosquitoes were carrying encephalitis. These mosquitoes, capable of traveling 15 miles from their breeding grounds, were much more difficult to control atop sewage than fresh water.

In September of 1986, Mexico and the U.S. agreed to cooperate, through the boundary and water commission, to deal with the New River water quality problem in anticipation of the 60 Minutes investigative story scheduled to air that December. In 1987, the California state legislature introduced AB 262, a repeat of AB 4309, which appropriated money for a screen and treatment plant at the border. This plan was again vetoed by Deukmejian, who explained he didn’t feel it was the business of state government to involve themselves in international matters such as controlling the water in another country.

Sufficient funding for New River cleanup is still an agonizing dilemma. In 1992, Congress cut $10 million in grant money for New River projects. Then in November of 1992, representatives from the U.S. and Mexico met in Calexico to praise yet another New River cleanup plan, Minute 288 of the boundary and water commission, entitled “Conceptual Plan for the Long-Term Solution to the Border Sanitation Problem of the New River.” Five years and up to $250 million were committed to settle this pollution problem along the entire border, they claim, once and for all. However, the Mexican government has yet to provide its financial plan for this latest project, as required by Minute 288. “We’re negotiating,” explains Robert Ybarra, secretary to the U.S. Section of the boundary and water commission. He’ll say little more.

Despite this, Representative Duncan Hunter wrote in the spring of 1993, “It appears that a lasting resolution to this environmental nightmare is finally at hand.” And in October of this year, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported, “Binational Panel Vows Baja Sewage Fix by ’95.” The more things change, the more they stay the same. “In 29 years,” says Yvonne Smith, director of the Imperial County Health Department, “I’ve seen the same parade of tweed suits. Only the faces change.”

A list of some of the agencies with a hand in the New River situation:

• U.S. EPA
• SEDESOL (Mexican EPA)
• Imperial Irrigation District U.S. Department of the Interior Federal Bureau of Reclamation Recursos Hidraulicos (Mexico)
• International Boundary and Water Commission Comision Intemacional de Limitasy Aguas (Mexico)
• U.S. Department of State
• Secretaria de Alojamiento Hutnano y Obras Publicas Estatal (Mexico)
• California Regional Water Quality Control Board U.S. Geological Survey Imperial County Health Department Imperial County Board of Supervisors Ayuntamiento de Mexicali California Health Department California Department of Fish and Game U.S. Fish and Wildlife Bureau Los Angeles Metropolitan Water District California Department of Water Resources Imperial County Agriculture Commission Comision de Obras Publicas (Mexico)
• Imperial County Public Works Department Environmental Health Services, Imperial County

And the NAFTA treaty promises to further complicate the New River issue. In the treaty as presently written, the process to resolve disputes is restricted to complaints by governments. Therefore, no individual, no worker, no environmental activist, no consumer, no civic group could initiate a complaint. Canada and the U.S. would like to be able to sue Mexico in its own courts for non-compliance with various aspects of the NAFTA treaty. In August of 1992, Mexico’s trade minister, Jaime Serra Puche, sent a note to negotiators in Washington, declaring, “Based on... the principles of sovereignty and non-intervention held by Mexico, any attempt by the United States and Canada to intervene in our courts must be rejected absolutely.”

In 1992 the National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a study in which they concluded that NAFTA would most likely reduce the levels of most major pollutants in Mexico. This study also claimed that free trade encourages countries to focus on producing goods they can manufacture most cheaply; hence, Mexico would lean toward the production of agricultural goods and labor-intensive manufactured goods. In turn, Mexico would reduce its production of chemical, plastic, and rubber goods, all of which result in high levels of toxic waste. Pollution control costs in the U.S. amount to only 1.4 percent of value added; therefore, American companies would be moving to Mexico primarily because of the wage differential — not to save money on pollution control or to take advantage of lax enforcement of environmental protection laws.

Yet a separate Canadian study commissioned by the Ontario Ministry of Environment and Energy in 1993 predicted that NAFTA would result in lowered environmental standards. This study claims that pollution could be expected to increase by more than 4.5 percent over the next three years without a trade pact and that NAFTA would only make things worse.

If NAFTA is enacted, yet another agency will join the already bloated list of New River overseers, the North American Commission on the Environment. The Bush administration suggested the creation of this commission, initially to win support of environmentalists for the NAFTA treaty. Yet since the environment commission will have no regulatory power, any environmental problems could take years to investigate. Action plans for addressing these problems would be prepared by an independent Secretary General, who would be appointed by the NAFTA parties. And a demonstrated pattern of noncompliance would have to be proven, precluding the environment commission from dealing with isolated incidents, no matter how devastating or environmentally damaging.

Also, before any NAFTA country considered challenging the environmental record of another, it would have to evaluate its own record and be prepared to defend its performance if the other country retaliated with a counter-complaint. Prominent environmental groups, such as the World Wildlife Fund and the Nature Conservancy, wonder if the environment commission accusations would even be taken seriously by pollution violators. In many respects, the new commission would duplicate the responsibilities of the boundary and water commission, the binational agency created after the Mexican Water Treaty of 1944.

In the midst of fatiguing dramas wrought by such things as New River pollution, white knights often come forth to offer ideas wild and wonderful for bureaucrats to gnaw upon. Horace McCracken is one such player. A youthful 71-year-old, McCracken possesses the mild, genial manners of a well-behaved student and the lithe gait of a much younger athlete. He has dedicated his life to purifying water. For the past 30 years, he has been perfecting solar-powered distillers. His products perform all over the world, in university laboratories and on remote island beaches.

McCracken has studied the New River morass intently; by his own admission he has devoted more than $30,000 of unpaid time into investigating the problem. His solution is simple and nothing a good engineer would disagree with: “Put air into the water, and nature cleans itself.” According to McCracken, “Mexico is providing us tons of free nutrients and a large amount of free water. We should thank them for it.” His solution is twofold; solar-powered aerators will clean all the disease-bearing bacteria, and reeds and water hyacinths will bind up the other pollutants. “You burn the plant mass for electricity,” he says, “or use it as a biomass to create methane fuel.”

In 1987 McCracken offered to perform a pilot test of his aerators for a mere $2,000. In one of his many reports, McCracken wrote: “There already is a sewage treatment plant for the New River. It is about 53 miles long and about 15 to 20 yards wide.” The New River itself. Consultants for the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, however, felt McCracken’s plan did not sufficiently resemble a bona fide laboratory experiment, and his request was denied.

McCracken then suggested that money be raised on the grassroots level. He devised a plastic model of a fish, based on a mold of a Salton Sea corvina. “Put these plastic fish in every store within 50 miles,” he told the bureaucrats, “and in a year you’d have a million dollars.” Again, McCracken’s plan was disapproved. “I offered those supervisors 14 different ways to make money,” he said recently, “and all they did was smile.” Phil Gruenberg at the water quality board was asked about the validity of McCracken’s aeration plans. “We’ve never commented negatively,” he replied.

From 1901 to 1911, thousands of settlers streamed into the Imperial Valley. Through an elaborate network of drains and canals, a bleak desert landscape was transformed within one decade into 220,000 acres of irrigated green farmland. It was the largest, quickest land reclamation project the world had ever witnessed. Twenty-five years later, that monumental diligence was channeled into the construction of the All-American Canal that was carved through 70 miles of sand dunes and desert emptiness to bring irrigation water. An international crew dug that canal, which saved the life of a county and provided the means to feed millions of people for generations afterward.

Today the Imperial Valley suffers with more than 30 percent unemployment. The Mexicali Valley, choking from similar yet more exaggerated economic problems, possesses 10 times the population of the entire Imperial County.

In the midst of it all, the New River flows, the pumps break down, the pipe crumbles, the resolutions are passed, the committees are sanctioned, and the promises are meted out like indulgences. At this moment, federal governments dicker over the terms of the cleanup. According to Phil Gruenberg, $200 million lies unspendable, untouchable, in a bureaucratic cyber-void. McCracken adds, “There are 32 agencies with their toes in the New River and the Salton Sea. None of them have the power to say yes, but they all have to power to say no. It’s institutional paralysis.” He has since withdrawn to Northern California.

And in Mexicali, men like Reyes Contreras remain resigned: “That cochinero [filthy mess] will never be cleaned up.” Mario Ruiz draws a picture in the sand near the old slaughterhouse and declares, “The government is just using us. They don’t care.” Other perceptions offer more hope. Dr. Tittle is a believer. For him, “Gunaji has made tremendous progress in Minute 288. The engineering and the political solution are in place.” Ybarra, from the boundary and water commission in Texas, feels we are proceeding on course. He points to Minute 279 as precedent. In that case, he explains, the U.S. matched Mexico’s $17 million to build a treatment plant and sewage improvements in Nuevo Laredo, along the Rio Grande. “Americans and Mexicans can work together,” he says.

As for Minute 288, all the commission will say is that “plans are being reviewed.” But Ingeniero Cecilio Lomeli, Mexicali agent of the Comision International de Limites y Aguas, speaks with quiet resoluteness on the subject. “We will bring the waters of the New River up to international standards,” he says, “but we will do it ourselves.”