Last week’s first rainstorm of the season brought only half an inch of rain to the San Diego-Tijuana region but served as the inaugural test for a 1,000-foot-long boom designed to prevent south-of-the-border trash from entering the U.S. and flowing into the Pacific Ocean.
The boom, which engineers initially expected to block 20 tons of debris, astonishingly stopped 50 tons.
“It worked exactly the way we wanted,” said Oscar Romo, Executive Director of Alter Terra, the binational environmental agency responsible for the boom’s design and installation.
This significant achievement marks a pivotal moment in a 20-year effort to keep Tijuana’s waste from polluting U.S. territory. All the collected debris originated in Mexico and would have otherwise ended up scattered across the Tijuana River Valley and the Pacific Ocean.
“If this is the result of just half an inch of rain, an inch would cover the entire Valley with trash. We prevented a significant amount of contamination—plastics, oils, paints, and solvents—from reaching the ocean. This is immensely valuable, and now we can show residents that we can rehabilitate this Valley,” Romo explained.
For decades, trash from Mexico, along with millions of gallons of raw sewage, has inundated the U.S. during storms, contaminating the Tijuana River Valley and coastal areas.
Romo envisions the boom as a crucial component in the ongoing effort to reduce trash and pollution in the region.
Most of the materials trapped are non-recyclable plastics. “Due to contamination, it all has to go to the landfill. We’re not allowed to recycle or repurpose it, as we don’t have the necessary permits,” Romo added.
Crews are set to begin cleaning up the plastics, trash, and other debris as the ground dries. “We’ll also separate and analyze the composition to understand what’s being collected,” Romo noted.
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Source: The Border Report
