The "New" River
While reading the Patagonia environmental story, a few things really stood out to me. It was hard to believe that the author of this essay was terrified that putting their feet in the particular body of water was going to harm them. Therefore, I looked up rivers around America that are very similar to this and I found one called the New River in southern California. This river was created completely by "accident" when an irrigation system failed and created it. About one hundred year ago, the New River began running from California to Mexico and neither country could figure out who should claim it. Therefore, it just kind of became a river that didn't belong to anyone. Factories, farms, and people began dumping trash and disposing of everything in the river turning it into a toxic wasteland.
The group that's in charge of monitoring bacteria levels and contamination levels within this river were brought into the video and talked about the processes that their group had to go through in order to test the water and even the results compared to typical rivers. The testers dress up in what looks like hasmat suits for super toxic chemicals. They wear several pairs of gloves and even masks and robes everywhere in order to prevent any bodily contact with the water. The leader of the group stated that typically, any amount of bacteria over 260 per ml of water is deemed contaminated and isn't allowed to be used in people's homes. This particular river, would sometimes test at millions per ml of water. That finding is astonishing. It's hard to believe that in less than one hundred years, a body of water that was pristine has now been turned into a wasteland that you cannot even come into contact with.
Another thing that was quite astonishing about this video was how it showed several illegal immigrants from Mexico using this river to cross over into the United States because border patrol wouldn't follow them into such contaminated areas. Just imagine all of the bacteria and diseases that they bring with them once they get into America and all of the sicknesses that can be caused just from exposure to a person with all of this bacteria on them.
Overall, this story was quite astonishing and even a little bit scary. In the part of the country where water is hard to come by, is it really safe and reasonable to turn freshwater (that is REALLY limited in our world) into a huge wasteland? Something needs to be done about this river before it begins to flow into seas where it can cause a lot of damage for larger cities in the western part of the USA.
Great job! It is clear that you thoroughly understand the topic that was in the Patagonia article. It is so crazy that we have a river so polluted in this very country. I think to a lot of Americans, it doesn't seem like pollution directly affects us because we don't see the effects in our daily lives. The video that you posted, however, is a perfect example of how we are in fact affected by pollution and have extreme pollution problems in America.
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