Imperial County authorities are angry over claims made by an L.A.-based agency for control over the New and Alamo rivers.
By Tony Perry, Times Staff WriterFebruary 24 2006
CALEXICO —
Immigrants wear trash bags and hide in pollution as they ford the New River — the unlikely object of a drinking water rights fight in Southern California.
If ever you doubted the dictum often attributed to Mark Twain that in the West whiskey is for drinking but water is for fighting over, the New River stands as proof.Long branded the dirtiest river in America, this aquatic nightmare slithers into the United States from Mexico through this border city in the Imperial Valley.
Technically, it is not a river but a ditch carrying drainage water the color of pea soup that brims with sewage, animal carcasses and industrial waste from Mexicali. This toxic stew contains bacteria and viruses known to cause tuberculosis, polio, hepatitis and typhoid.Drug smugglers and illegal immigrants use the smelly, sudsy river as an illicit entryway to the United States, confident that U.S. Border Patrol agents will not pursue them into the murky water.When divers from the Imperial County Sheriff's Department need to retrieve a drowned body from the river, they don hazardous-materials suits.Surely no one would fight for ownership of what one county health official has called "a rattlesnake in our backyard."Wrong.This is California. If there is water, even filthy water, there are lawyers and politicians arguing over who owns it.
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