SAN DIEGO (Border Report) — The cleanup effort in an area known as the “sod farm” in the Tijuana River Valley is now approaching its third month. But the end is near, according to the International Boundary and Water Commission.
Tons of trash began piling up during a storm in January that flooded the site and left it covered with a thick layer of debris that flowed in from Mexico.
“We had a lot of offers to help, almost a community project,” said Morgan Rogers, the area operations manager for the IBWC’s field office in San Diego. “Everything went fairly smoothly, and you can see it’s pretty much the way we were, there’s grass growing, all is well.”
Rogers says they brought in personnel and equipment from Texas and started the work in March.
He said the city of Imperial Beach also provided needed resources along the way before a local contractor was hired to haul away from the site the trash and material that crews had piled up and placed in dumpsters.
A layer of green grass and work is once again evident along the Tijuana River Valley’s ‘sod farm’ where IBWC crews continue cleaning up trash and debris brought in by a January storm. (Salvador Rivera/Border Report)
“Over 650 tons of trash has been removed from this site,” Rogers said. “Some of it was in tiny little pieces and our crews had to use rakes to move it.”
Border Report asked Rogers if the flooding and trash buildup is likely to happen again in the future, and he said it’s highly unlikely.
“The storm in January we saw, was the fourth-largest storm flow we’ve seen since we’ve been recording since the 60s, so this was a huge storm,” he said. “Our EPA partners estimated this was a 26-year storm, so we shouldn’t see this every year, I certainly hope we don’t.”
According to Rogers, the cleanup should be done by next week.
“We’re not done yet.”
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