A Del Mar-based nonprofit is working to remove plastics and other waste from Tijuana River tributaries before it enters the Pacific Ocean.
Trash booms are floating barriers that catch trash and let water flow through. WILDCOAST installed one in Tijuana’s Los Laureles Canyon in 2021. Since then, the organization said it’s caught more than 239,000 pounds of solid waste, plastic and tires.
This week, they added a second trash boom across a cement basin in Matadero Canyon. It’s made out of a recycled drift net. In the empty basin, it looks a bit like a tall tennis net.
Fay Crevoshay, WILDCOAST's communications and policy director, says heavy rains in years past have turned the basin into "a fetid lake that you could smell much before you could see it."
"The hole where the water exits and goes down to the Tijuana River got filled with trash and it got stuck," she said.
Now, WILDCOAST estimates that the two trash booms will stop more than 160,000 pounds of trash from entering the Pacific Ocean each year. That trash can end up on San Diego beaches.
Crevoshay said rapid population growth in Tijuana has strained trash collection services.
"The problem with Tijuana is that the trash is picked in a very disorganized manner," she said. "In the very underserved … neighborhoods, really underserved, there is very little pickup."
She said animals get into bagged trash, and rain carries it into waterways.
WILDCOAST hires community members to collect and sort what’s caught in the trash booms. They can recycle the plastic at collection points WILDCOAST manages in Tijuana.
"We have plans for more trash booms and more points," Crevoshay said. "We want to take all of Tijuana and make it an example for Mexico of how you can solve a difficult problem."
She said it’s a piece of the cross-border pollution issue locals can help stop at the source.
