Wildcoast/Costasalvaje

Community gathers to clean the environment
by Martin Zazueta

Every year the the Tijuana River Valley Regional Park gets packed with all sorts of trash that flows down from Tijuana during the rainy season, causing devastating damage to the valley's plant and animal life. The worst part is that the trash and raw sewage comes every year due to the geographic settings of Tijuana, which is located at a higher elevation than southern San Diego causing a water runoff: all the sewage of Tijuana comes in causing the river valley to fill up with tires, bottles, styrofoam, and countless other junk that flows in from Tijuana. To combat the problem Wildcoast, an environmental non-profit organization based in Imperial Beach, has been working to get community support to help clean-up the Tijuana River Valley, and that's just what they've accomplished.

Dr. Arias, Southwest High's engineering teacher, coordinated with Wildcoast to have the cleanup project director, Paloma Aguirre, to give a Powerpoint presentation to SOH students in which they were made aware or reminded of the severe crisis that has plagued the river valley. Many students were shocked at the large extend of the problem. One student stated: “I knew it was dirty there, but not that dirty”. At the end of the presentation Ms. Aguirre had the teachers assign the students a letter to write to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to urge for more federal support of the issue. She also had a call to action inviting the students to come on Saturday October 24, 2009 from 9a.m.-12 p.m. to the last clean up of the year before the rain comes back.

With this call to action Ms. Aguirre stated “Because Southwest is so close, and is in fact the closest school to the River Valley, I think it's important that the Southwest High community leads the way in our efforts”

So, last Saturday that's exactly what happened: at least 20 SOH community members went out to clean-up the trash. Seniors such as Football player Carlos Troche and Academic Decathlete Joseph Dancel came to put in their part, while at the same time were earning community service hours for graduation and for college applications. Even Freshmen showed up to do their part. Dr Arias showed up as well and speeded up the trash collections by going on the trails with his truck to collect filled bags, tires and any other big pieces of collected trash.

Apart from SOH, several other high schools from throughout the county such as High Tech High, and members from several universities came to help out the community. At the event there were well over 100 people cleaning up the River Valley. But even with these people helping, a greater effort across the board is needed from the Sweetwater District board.

Pearl Quiñones, board member of the Sweetwater Union High School District was also present on Saturday and was also shocked at the sight of all the trash saying that “this is just something one has to see for themselves to understand the magnitude”. Ms. Quiñones says that she plans to have Ms. Aguirre give a presentation to the rest of the Board and hopes to champion an effort to have the Sweetwater District involve all the schools and organize a monthly cleanup project for this “affects all of us directly”.

Well even though the problem is far from solved, the wheels are in motion to generate a bright clean future, the question is whether you'll “make it happen, watch it happen, or wonder how it happened”, and is this case, only the those making it happen are needed. If your interested in making things happen, you can do your part by volunteering at Wildcoast events, or with any other non-profit organization, you can also write a letter to any of your area's elected officials urging them to take action. For more information visit the Wildcoast website at http://www.wildcoast.net/