Flood Control, Conservation, and the Limits of Environmentalism at the San Diego-Tijuana Border, 1960s-1970s

• In Event: Fluid Management: Water Pollution, Flood Control, and Coastal Health

Abstract

This paper examines the conflict between flood control and environmentalism in the binational Tijuana River Valley of San Diego and Tijuana during the 1960s and 1970s. During these years, American-owned maquiladoras (assembly plants) drove rapid population growth in the Mexican border city of Tijuana. Sewage and industrial toxins from south of the border spilled into the northbound Tijuana River, polluting public lands and properties downstream in San Diego. In 1967, the International Boundary and Water Commission of the United States and Mexico (IBWC) agreed to construct a concrete channel on the Tijuana River. While intended for flood control, the channel was also expected to help the IBWC solve the pollution problem. However, before construction began on the U.S. portion of the channel, environmental groups in San Diego blocked the project and established a California state park, preserving the Tijuana River Estuary as a wildlife habitat. But the channelized river south of the border served as a projectile for pollutants from Tijuana into the wetland habitat on the U.S. side. Therefore, the conservation of the estuary was both a win and a loss for the environmental movement, showing the limitations of environmentalism in a river basin divided between two sovereign and unequal nation-states.

Author

• Kevan Malone, Texas Tech University