Rio Grande an International Boundary River Is Drying up and in Need of Restoration

The headwater source of the Rio Grande is in the Colorado San Juan Mountains as it flows southeast and south. The river crosses deserts and steppes, watering rich irrigated agricultural regions as it drains into the Gulf of Mexico near Brownsville, Texas. The river flow pattern is disrupted by hundreds of dams and irrigation diversions, which has left sections of the Rio Grande River dry. The lower Rio Grande Valley including the Rio Grande Delta is heavily irrigated and has become an important agricultural region. Since the mid-1990s, the flow has been reduced to 20% because of many large diversions, dams and consumption of water by cities and irrigated farmland. Even with a series of 2001 and 2002, Mexico-United States agreements administered by the International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) the Rio Grande River had continued to failed to reach the Gulf of Mexico. Mexico and United States share the river. Historically, the Rio Grande has provided limited navigation and border security. There is a need to restore navigation and shipping by creating a lock and dam system from El Paso, Texas and Matamoros, Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, In addition there is also a need to restore border security for the Lower Rio Grande, an international border river. If the Rio Grande is ever going to recover, it will require a lock and dam system and an increased river flow. The increased flow needs to be achieved by adding additional water from feeder lakes, a water pipeline, and a balanced approach to water management must include efficiency measures and aggressive conservation in urban areas and on irrigated agricultural lands.

Agent Orange Chemical Plant Locations in the United States and Canada: Environmental and Human Health Impacts

During the Vietnam War, millions of liters of six tactical herbicides were sprayed on the southern Vietnam landscape to defoliate forests, to clear military perimeters and to destroy enemy food supplies. The environmental and human health impacts of spraying these herbicides, especially Agent Orange and those formulated with mixtures that included 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T) which was contaminated with 2,3,7,8-tetracholorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) have been documented over the last 60 years. The dioxin TCDD clean-up efforts at former military bases and other Vietnam hotspots are ongoing. However, the lesser-told story was the environmental and human health impacts on the communities and chemical plant workers who manufactured Agent Orange and other herbicides that became contaminated with dioxin TCDD in the manufacturing processes at seven locations in the United States and one site in Canada. The pollution at these chemical plant sites, adjacent rivers and groundwater is well known within each affected state or province but not widely recognized beyond their localities. In this paper we assess the national long-term effects on land, groundwater and river resources where Agent Orange and other agricultural herbicides containing 2,4,5-T with unknown amounts of dioxin TCDD were manufactured, transported, and temporarily stored. The sites where residual tactical herbicides with contaminated by-products were applied to public lands or disposed of by military and civilian workers within the United States and Canada are identified. After 60 years, these communities are still paying the price for the U.S. Government, DOD and USDA decisions to provide and use agricultural herbicides as tactical chemical weapons during the Vietnam War (1962-1971). There have been human health issues associated with the chemical manufacture, transport, storage and disposal of these herbicides related to workers who moved these chemical weapons from United States and Canada to SE Asia. Most of these dioxin contaminated tactical herbicides were transported via railroads to ports at Mobile, Alabama and Gulfport, Mississippi. They were then loaded on ocean-going ships and transported via the Panama Canal for use during the Vietnam War. The objective of this study is to document the environmental and human consequences of the manufacture of tactical herbicides with dioxin TCDD and arsenic on the chemical plant, transportation, application, storage and disposal workers. The costs of cleanup of these North America chemical plant sites, transportation corridors, temporary and long-term storage areas, supply chain storage facilities with residual tactical herbicide, application, and disposal sites to date, is in the billions of dollars. Billions have been spent on hazardous waste incineration to destroy the dioxin TCDD or bury it in certified landfills. Government mandated environmental covenants are on titles of properties still contaminated with high levels of dioxin TCDD. If landowners attempt to rescind land use restrictions, many more billions of dollars will be needed to finish the environmental cleanup and restore natural resources. These cost estimates do not include the billions of dollars needed to treat the effects of dioxin TCDD exposure of U.S. and Canadian civilian workers who manufactured and handled these contaminated herbicides during the Vietnam War as well as address human health issues of their offspring.