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http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1421388/posts

Clean it up [Mexico pollutes river w/disease, "migrants" swim thru it, then work in food industry]
San Diego Union Tribune ^ | June 12, 2005

Posted on 06/12/2005 8:06:02 AM PDT by John Jorsett

For decades, the open sewer known as the New River has carried a toxic brew of pollutants across the U.S.-Mexico border, through Calexico and Brawley and on to the Salton Sea, polluting everything in its path.

Despite a quarter century of promises on both sides of the border, the New River still stinks, still directly threatens the health of tens of thousands of Californians and still qualifies as perhaps the most polluted waterway in North America. In addition to the raw sewage dumped into the river in Mexicali, the New River's sludge contains heavy metals, pesticides and numerous disease-carrying pathogens, according to the California Environmental Protection Agency.

In 1979, the California Department of Health reported that water samples from the New River contained levels of intestinal bacteria 1 million times higher than that permissible for domestic rivers under standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Today, a quarter-century later, the New River is almost certainly filthier than it was then.

On any given night, scores of Mexican migrants seeking to enter the United States illegally float down the New River, hiding amid its coagulated white foam and counting on the river's noxious filth to keep the U.S. Border Patrol at bay. After their immersion in the most disease-breeding water on the continent, some of these migrants then move on to work in agriculture and food-service industries in California.

Border Patrol agents who accidentally fall into the New River while pursuing illegal migrants are immediately sent to a hospital to be disinfected.

Enough is enough. This environmental disgrace has gone on far too long.

(Excerpt) Read more at signonsandiego.com ...