Stopping Pollution at the Source

Situated downstream of Tijuana’s urban Los Laureles Canyon, the Goat Canyon Sediment Basin Complex acts like a giant catcher’s mitt for trash. Since 2005, it prevents 50 tons of debris a year from washing into California’s Tijuana River Valley—home to the region’s largest, most biodiverse wetland. With support from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and NOAA’s Marine Debris Program, the Tijuana River Reserve is working to prevent this essential infrastructure from being overwhelmed by intense rains and flooding.

“The existing booms capture a lot of trash and debris, but they aren’t always stable in a flood,” says Chris Peregrin, manager of the Reserve. “In a flash flood, a lot of trash and debris gets into the estuary, where it can block waterways and exacerbate flooding. We’ve known that we need to redesign the booms for years, and now we have the resources to do it.”

As part of the California Department of Parks and Recreation, which manages the basin complex, the Reserve is repositioning a boom and installing new floats to better reinforce it against floods. A mid-season boom clean-out will prevent plastic and debris degradation and help the team to better understand the effectiveness of the new approach.

Alongside improvements to infrastructure, the team is working with communities spanning three nations to encourage overall trash reduction. Together, they are creating educational videos in which community members can share their stories to inspire action to prevent marine debris from entering waterways in the first place. Additionally, they will work to strengthen relationships with Tribal communities on both sides of the border on this and related restoration and stewardship approaches.

“Intercepting trash at its source is key, and that means working with communities over the long term,” says Dr. Kristen Goodrich, lead for the Reserve’s Coastal Training Program, which has partnered with groups on both sides of the Mexico–United States border for more than a decade on this critical issue. 

“The work we are doing now would not have been possible without years of building relationships and showing that together we can have an impact,” says Goodrich. “With nearly 2,000 community members and partners, we’ve removed more than 1,000,000 pounds of trash from the watershed. Through all of this, NOAA’s Marine Debris program has been a dedicated champion and supporter.”

That support helped the Reserve catalyze the ResiDUOS project, a first-of-its-kind, community-driven effort to reduce debris and trash, create a binational emergency response guide to flooding, and inspire a new generation of adaptive leaders who can span boundaries and foster the relationships needed to nurture change.

“Through ResiDUOS, communities are learning about the science behind plastic pollution and decision-making around solid waste management and what they can do about it,” says Goodrich, who points to Tijuana’s groundbreaking plastic bag ban, community members turning trash into valuable products using a circular economy approach, and the more than 6,000 volunteer hours that have been logged on both sides of the border.

Discover more about the trash boom project here and here.

Want more Reserve stories delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to our newsletter.