I found this article very informative. I can't imagine how it used to look there before the Colorado River was dammed.
Author of this article is unknown.
Bob H
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The Colorado River in America no longer even reaches the Gulf of California in Mexico near Mexicali. It dries up before it gets there from all the
dams and water diversions for agriculture and industry that reduce it's flow to a trickle.
There use to be an enormous river delta there where the river emptied into the sea.
Large populations of crocodiles, jaguars, fish and other animals lived and bred in the jungle like delta.
Thousands of Mexican Indians lived off the delta's fish for thousands of years.
Now the delta is dried up and filled with human and livestock feces, agricultural fertilizers and chemicals and also factory pollutants.
Much of the delta is also now saline (salt poisoned) because river sediments no longer replenish it and the land has sunk, allowing sea water to flood
inland which has salt poisoned much of the plants/animals. Salt bleed out from upstream irrigation has also poisoned the delta.
The Mexican Indians who once lived there have almost all migrated to the nearby slums of Mexicali.
A few are still left but live in abject poverty, the older ones tell stories of how beautiful the delta once was before American dams and pollution
dried it up and destroyed it.
The Mexican farmers and government have complained but the U.S, refuses to remove the dams.
The same is true of the Rio Grande River in America, it no longer reaches the Gulf of Mexico for the same reasons and is heavily polluted. The Rio
Grande fisheries have been destroyed.BooJumMan - 4-5-2010 at 08:13 AM
That was depressing TMW - 4-5-2010 at 08:39 AM
I have some friends that have a home east of hwy 5 near KM50 and there is water running behind the house. I had always thought it was from the river
but maybe it is a canal. If so where is the water coming from? It's fresh water not salt.TMW - 4-5-2010 at 08:48 AM
