The Arroyo Colorado

Yesterday the director and I went out on the Arroyo Colorado to gather water quality data with the Hydrolab instrument. We were looking at the effects of barges running up and down the stream which cause mixing with a consequent reduction in things like dissolved oxygen. Without boring you to death with a lecture on aquatic chemistry, just let me say that the Arroyo Colorado is the most quality compromised stream in Texas, and probably one of the most filthy in the United States. Every major city in the Rio Grande Delta uses it as a dumping source for their treated sewage effluent and storm drainage, and countless farm fields runoff into it. There's a long standing joke that the headwaters of the Arroyo Colorado are a sewer outfall. Chemicals like dieldrin, DDT, DDE and others are still lurking in the sediments of this stream.

And still people swim in it run jetskis, eat fish and generally treat this toxic watercourse like an honest-to-god river. It's hard not to be lulled into a sense of false security as you travel along it's miles of meandering tree lined banks, or perhaps view the houses built downstream around Arroyo City, huge houses with manicured lawns, lighted docks and palatial layouts. But the stream is what it is.

The mouth of the Arroyo Colorado empties into the Laguna Madre, depositing it's nitrogen rich waters in an otherwise hypersaline (super salty) environment. This rich soup is responsible for increased algae blooms, and probably contributes to the Brown tide. My friend Joe K. calls the Arroyo "the biggest open pit toilet in Texas".

Recently, the state has become quite aware of the quality problem and is addressing it in response to pressure from some citizens groups, like the Arroyo Colorado coalition. Personally, I find their efforts ludicrious. One of the funniest was an advertising campaign designed to get people to stop shoveling their dog shit down the storm sewers where it eventually will end up in the Arroyo. It won't make a bit of difference...not even a turd in a bucket...

Then the state (TCEQ), the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality decided they needed more outreach, and hired a woman from Austin to run the program. Smart move. In any event, substantive change to the quality of that watercourse probably won't occur in my lifetime. It would take a radical restructuring of the entire economic base here (agriculture) to significantly reduce the amount of fertilizer and pesticide runoff, as well as figuring out a solution to the seweage and drainage problems for each municipality that dumps into the Arroyo. A daunting, overwhelming task that will probably take generations to accomplish. And that's why it's so laughable to try and get people to quit shoveling dogshit down the drain.