U.S. and Mexico struggle to clean up Rio Grande

When the Rio Grande is swollen with rain, as it was recently in Laredo, it's hard to tell that more than 5 million gallons of raw sewage spill into its waters every day. But kayak through the little creeks on the side of the river bordering Mexico, and the odor is unmistakable. So are the sights — chocolate-brown water, floating dog carcasses, dead fish. "The smell was terrible. You couldn't stand it," Amanda Perez, one of two commissioners in the border town of Rio Bravo, said after a kayaking trip on the river with local border officials and environmentalists. "I don't have words to explain it. … I did not believe it was that bad." Perez's town is one of many along the Texas-Mexico border where water supplies are threatened by persistent pollution in the Rio Grande, due, in part, to raw sewage coming from Nuevo Laredo in Mexico. Perez, local officials and environmental advocates along the border are calling for the U.S. and Mexico to tackle the problem of Rio Grande pollution more aggressively. But that's easier said than done in a time of record stagnation in American government and violence on the other side of the border. Because the river straddles two borders, getting things accomplished here is more complicated, said George Frisvold, a professor at the University of Arizona who studies international environmental policy. While the federal Environmental Protection Agency would typically be involved in such an issue, here it must also be joined by the U.S. State Department's International Boundary and Water Commission and a Mexican counterpart, which means more bureaucratic delays...more