Tijuana River
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The Tijuana River (Spanish: Río Tijuana) is an intermittent river, approximately 120 mi (195 km) long, on the Pacific coast of northern Baja California in Mexico and southern California in the United States. It drains an arid area along the U.S.-Mexico border, flowing through Mexico for most its course then crossing the border for its lower 5 mi (8 km) to empty into the ocean in an estuary on the southern edge of San Diego. Its lower reaches provide the last undeveloped coast wetlands in San Diego County amidst a highly urbanized environment at the southern city limits of Imperial Beach. The river has been the subject of great controversy in recent decades regarding pollution, flood control, and U.S. border protection.
Description
It rises in the Sierra de Juárez of northern Baja California, approximately 45 mi (72 km) ENE of Ensenada. It flows WNW through Tijuana, crossing the border approximately 5 mi (8 km) from the Pacific. It flows west, just skirting the international border south of the San Ysidro section of San Diego. It enters the Pacific approximately 10 mi (16 km) south of downtown San Diego at the southern city limits of Imperial Beach. The lower 2 mi (3 km) of the river form a broad mud flat estuary that is prone to flooding in years of heavy rains. It is impounded in Mexico southeast of Tijuana by the Abelardo L. Rodríguez Dam for drinking water and irrigation.
The Tijuana River Reserve, established as part of the National Estuarine Research Reserve system in the United States, protects part of the estuary of the river near the ocean in the United States.
The river has been used as a wastewater conduit for much of the last several centuries. Despite cross-border efforts to clean it up, legal and illegal raw sewage overflows in the surrounding canyons are recurring problem along the river. According to a 1993 report [1] (http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0694/et0694s1.html) by the city of San Diego, the city had collected and treated an average of 13 million gallons (50 million liters) per day of raw sewage that had crossed the Mexican border from Tijuana.
Severe flooding on the river has been a constant danger in the urbanized areas in its lower course. In the 1970s the Mexican government built a concrete channel to control flooding in Tijuana. Because of habitat concernes in the estuary, however, the connecting channel on the U.S. side of the border was never built. In the dry winters of the 1980s, the aborted channel did not present a problem, but severe flooding in the winter of 1993 caused widespread damage on both sides of the border. The destruction caused widespread resentment, especially among U.S. property owners, towards the U.S. government over its refusal to control flooding in the estuary.
External links
- SDSU: Tijuana River Watershed (http://trw.sdsu.edu/)
- San Diego Earth Times: Tijuana River Controversy (http://www.sdearthtimes.com/et0694/et0694s1.html)
- NOAA: Tijuana River Reserve (http://nerrs.noaa.gov/TijuanaRiver/welcome.html)