When you see the Tijuana River Valley for the first time, it’s something that you have no words for; there are thousands of plastic bottles and hundreds of pieces of trash. You would never think that so much trash could be located in one riverbed. Most of the trash comes from Tijuana, all of the bottles say “ECOCE” and have labels in Spanish. While I was at WiLDCOAST I realized that there wasn’t a direct remedy to this problem; during my immersion I learned that the only way that this problem could ever be taken care of is if both the United States and Tijuana work together. This problem of pollution is not only affecting the health of people in Tijuana, it’s also affecting San Diegans. The trash will not stay on one side of the border-we both need to do something about the problem in the Tijuana River Valley.
There are more than 2 million tires sent to Mexico every year by California; because tires have more life in them they are used in Mexico for a short time, so they can also use them for their cars or as a building tool for their homes. When the tires are no longer useful to them they throw them away or they are swept to the nearby river (the Tijuana River) which comes back to San Diego. This is an ongoing cycle, California uses tires, they send them to Mexico when they’re done with them, Mexico uses them for their houses or their cars and when they’re done with them, the wheels go back into the Tijuana River. Tijuana doesn’t have the resources to help stop the on-going cycle by themselves - seeing as how their budget is the same as the city of Del Mar. The tires are a big part of this problem, but after the tires, there are the thousands of plastic bottles and trash located in the River Valley.
Imperial Beach is instantly affected by all the pollution found in the Tijuana River Valley; it is a community that has its beach closed 200 days out of the year. If we could find a way to work together with our neighboring country, we could have a solution to this problem. Imperial Beach is close to the border so all of the pollution found across the border could be found in Imperial Beach because it goes through the river and because of the currents, most of the contaminants can be found in Imperial Beach. Since my internship is located in Imperial Beach, I noticed that there aren’t as many people in the water; there were a lot of fisherman however. Since all of the pollutants come across the border, the fisherman could be eating contaminated fish that could be harmful. We need to work with Mexico so that the fish that Imperial Beach community members are eating can be safe and so that Tijuana could have a clean healthy community as well.
The more media the Tijuana River Valley can get, the better. It’s important for people to realize how important it is to get the River Valley cleaned up and usually that means that they need some impressive visuals. During immersion, Telemundo did a segment on the Tijuana River Valley and how the only way to fix this problem was to work together. The cameraman and reporter seemed quite taken aback by the fact that there was so much trash, and that it smelled so bad. Since Telemundo is a Spanish network that plays in both the United States and Mexico: we found it to be the perfect opportunity to tell the story about the Tijuana River Valley and working binationally.
During immersion we had the chance to go to a meeting that had officials from both sides of the border. There was a man that spoke about the recycling program that the officials intend to start in Tijuana soon, there were several people from other organizations that wanted to talk about what they planned to do for the both communities. I learned a lot about the situation in Tijuana and how we had to do a lot of research in order to even think about starting a recycling program in Tijuana. Seeing as how Tijuana has such a low budget, I learned that recycling programs need collecting stations for trash and recycling. Pick-up trucks in Tijuana spend 70% transporting their trash and only 30% actually collecting trash. We need to be able to help Tijuana with their trash problem because at this point, it’s also affecting the U.S.
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