Ensenada, Baja California, December 12, 2016.- An integrated water management program, which evaluates priority problems and defines the projects needed to improve the Tijuana River Basin, will be implemented starting next year by Pronatura Noroeste, winner of the 2016 Ecological Merit Award.

Gabriela Caloca Michel, the project coordinator of Pronatura Noroeste’s Water and Wetlands Conservation Program, recalled that since 2012 the civil association had been deploying restoration and conservation actions mainly in three kilometers of the watershed in the municipality of Tijuana.

“In Tijuana most of the river is channeled in concrete, so this part we are working on is one of the only areas that is found naturally, and the idea is to recover it, restore it, and create new habitat both for wildlife and so that people begin to know that they have a natural river,” he said.

He mentioned that the agreement signed with the Comisión Estatal de Servicios Públicos de Tijuana (CESPT), guarantees the flow of water and additional treatment that takes care of the quality of the liquid.

In addition to the above, the concession, which covers nine hectares and 1.6 kilometers of the riverbed, obtained in the name of Pronatura Noroeste and valid for the next 30 years, supports the basin’s conservation and protection strategies.

Caloca Michel emphasized that the inter-institutional alliances and legal strategies are also accompanied by direct actions such as hydrological studies and detailed topography, which have allowed the use of machinery to naturally shape the riverbed, thus contributing to the natural improvement of the water.

WETLAND IN TECATE

Given that the Tijuana River Basin is naturally connected to the municipality of Tecate, conservation efforts are not restricted to just one municipality, so for the past two years, Pronatura Noroeste has been working on the restoration of an artificial wetland located in Tecate, whose waters flow into the basin.

Gabriela Caloca explained that the relevance of attending to the artificial wetland is because it was created to improve the quality of the water that comes from a treatment plant; after passing through the wetland, it flows into the Tecate River, then into the Arroyo Alamar and finally into the Tijuana River.

“The wetland was not working well; it smelled bad, and it was full of vegetation, and that is why the Tecate brewery contacted us, they sought us out through the Mexican Fund for the Conservation of Nature, and we began to rehabilitate the wetland,” he said.

He mentioned that, two years after starting the restoration, a hydrological analysis has already been carried out, the topography has been studied, birds and vegetation have been monitored, and the treatment plant personnel have been trained so that they know how to manage the wetland and so that the problem does not recur.

Although the wetland project will end in January 2017, Pronatura Noroeste has proposed to maintain the conservation actions in the Tijuana River Basin, implemented both in Tecate and Tijuana, to guarantee water quality and all the benefits this implies.