Majestic Rio Grande Has Become An Open Sewer -- Dangerous Bacteria, Chemical Waste Taint Valley's Drinking Water

LAREDO, Texas - Health officials along the U.S.-Mexican border know the Rio Grande well.

The river, separating their communities from Mexico, is a principal source of drinking water. Authorities also have long suspected it is laced with hazardous chemicals and deadly bacteria - an environmental disaster waiting to happen.

Now, thanks to a state-federal study of chemical waste in the river and the results of a post-mortem on a teenager, they can document how dangerous the Rio Grande is.

"I am certain, positive that there have been other deaths attributable to conditions of the river, but we have not been able to document them before," said Jerry Robinson, director of the Laredo Health Department.

"Now, we have absolutely, scientifically documented proof that pollutants in the river are human risk factors and, in one case, a cause of death."

The Rio Grande is born high in the Colorado Rockies as pure snowmelt, flowing 1,800 miles through New Mexico, then dividing Texas and Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico.

Along nearly 900 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, the river is the sole source of drinking water for more than 3 million people. It also picks up sewage from those communities, and agricultural pesticide runoff and industrial waste from U.S. and Mexican manufacturing plants.

Last year the environmental group American Rivers rated the Rio Grande the nation's most polluted river. This year it's still in the top 10.

Last summer a Webb County teenager died of meningo-encephalitis, an infection of the central nervous system that occurs when the waterborne naegleria amoeba attacks the brain or the membranes around the brain and spinal cord. It is almost always fatal.

The 13-year-old boy, whom authorities have refused to identify, had been swimming in the Rio Grande near a sewage collection pond about 12 miles south of downtown Laredo.

State health officials stressed that the death was an anomaly. Although the naegleria amoeba is found throughout the state, particularly in water contaminated with human feces, there is an average of one death per year in Texas resulting from the infection.

Robinson sees it differently.

"You can only report what you know," he said.

"We don't know how many people cross the river illegally, get sick and die out in the brush country north of the border."

Laredo health officials placed signs along the U.S. side of the river in English and Spanish, warning people not to swim. Mexican authorities have issued similar warnings.

On Sept. 30, the state-federal study of toxic waste in the Rio Grande revealed potentially harmful levels of 30 elements at 17 sites that, while posing no immediate human risk, represent "human health risks" from regular, long-term consumption of untreated water or eating fish from the river.

The stretch of river between El Paso and Juarez, and Laredo and Nuevo Laredo, are among the worst areas cited in the study, with nitrates, silver, nickel and industrial solvents detected.

In the $500,000 study, coordinated by the joint U.S.-Mexican International Boundary Water Commission, samples of water, fish tissue and sediment were taken from 19 sites along the main part of the Rio Grande and 26 sites along its tributaries.

State officials said only one sample was taken at each site, giving a "snapshot" of the river's condition. The study also did not examine waste-water pollution.

"What the study gives us is a jumping-off point for planning how best to clean up the river," said Diana Borja, the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission's director of border affairs. "That planning is under way with enthusiasm from both sides of the border.

"This is a binational problem, and it will be solved with the efforts of both nations. Mexican communities have had their expectations raised, and they want changes now."

Francisco Nunez Sanchez, the aggressive director of Juarez's Municipal Committee on Ecology, agreed that cleaning up the Rio Grande is a job for both nations.

"We will do the best we can with the resources available," he said.

"But clearly, real success will come through cooperative ventures. I don't think either nation can do it alone."

In Laredo, those who monitor the river's environmental health say they wish the toxic-chemical study had gone further.

"Unless we get a concerted effort all up and down the river on both sides to focus the huge kinds of expenditures necessary to improve water quality, it will be difficult to maintain a healthy population in the 21st century," said Jim Earhart of the Laredo-based Rio Grande International Study Center, which monitors the river regularly.

"Otherwise, we're inviting disaster."

The presence of toxic materials in the river is no surprise, said Robinson, the Laredo Health Department director.

"There are literally miles of customs warehouses filled with every possible kind of hazardous material used in manufacturing and agriculture," he said.

"We have no idea what they are because there is no U.S. or Mexican requirement for a registry of hazardous materials that cross the border every day."

Laredo's water issues cannot be separated from those of Nuevo Laredo, Robinson said.

"We're really one great city that shares the river," he said. "We care about each other. We work very closely with each other to try and solve the river's problems."

Laredo, with 155,000 residents, is the smaller city. Nuevo Laredo has mushroomed to about 450,000 residents, thanks in part to the 47 "maquiladoras," manufacturing plants in the Mexican city.

Each day, Laredo's treated sewage is released into the river, while 25 million to 30 million gallons of untreated waste is dumped into the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo, say city health officials.

In addition, Mexican plants and a number of firms on the Texas side dump liquid chemicals and hazardous materials directly into the river, often illegally, Robinson said.

Budget and manpower limitations in cities on both sides hamper enforcement of environmental laws prohibiting such practices, he said. The result, Robinson said, is that the river becomes a cesspool.

At Laredo, the one-year average for coliform bacteria in the Rio Grande, an indicator of microbial contamination, ranges from 1,727 per 100 milliliters upstream from Laredo to about 3,150 near the city's drinking-water intakes. Around downtown, where Nuevo Laredo dumps its sewage, coliform counts jump to 107,000. Counts exceeding 200,000 are not uncommon, Robinson said.

Water with fecal coliform counts above 200 per 100 milliliters for an averaged sample, or 1,000 for a single sample, are considered unhealthy for human recreation, according to state and federal water quality standards.

Laredo produces about 36 million gallons of purified water a day from the river, soaring to 48 million gallons a day during the peak summer months.

"The standard for drinking water is zero coliform. Currently, Laredo is able to provide water that is safe and pure," Robinson said.

"But across the river, Nuevo Laredo can only provide about 65 percent of its population with treated water. The rest must depend on water taken directly from the river."

Tomas Rodriguez, director of Laredo Water Utilities, said the city regularly tests its drinking water to ensure all pollutants are removed and that it meets state and federal requirements for purity.

"I don't want to minimize the situation, but this is not the time for alarm," Rodriguez said. "There are some positive signs that we're making some progress."

The biggest change will occur when the new $44 million wastewater treatment facility goes on line at Nuevo Laredo, he said. It is the first such facility on the Mexican side of the Rio Grande.

"That's going take out about 85 percent of the human waste from the river as it goes downstream," Rodriguez said. "That will be a substantial change."