Effects of the proposed Springfield Avenue extension on the Río Grande -- Laredo 's drinking water source 

By Jim Earhart and Pam Vaughan

A large city is in some ways like the human body. Both a city and a human body generate wastes that must be dealt with if they are to remain healthy. Each has a circulatory system that moves water-based fluids -- the human body moving blood and lymph through arteries, veins, and capillaries while the city moves drinking water, sewage, and rainwater through pipes, culverts, ditches, and streams. If the circulatory system is damaged in either the city or the human body, neither will work well and both may experience serious problems. The proposed Springfield Avenue extension will severely damage a segment of Manadas Creek that is a small -- but important -- component of our city's circulatory system.

In our human bodies lymph nodes serve as filters, removing toxic substances, bacteria, and cancer cells -- culprits that could make us sick or even kill us if our lymphatic systems are damaged or destroyed. The porous soil, trees, shrubs, flowers, and grasses in the branch of Manadas Creek -- now marked for destruction by the proposed Springfield Avenue Extension -- act somewhat like the lymph nodes of our bodies, removing motor oil, fertilizers, pesticides, and other hazardous and toxic materials that wash down from the surrounding streets and driveways of the nearby subdivisions. The creek forms a “natural, green garbage disposal system” that cleans stormwater as it flows toward the river and our Jefferson Street drinking water treatment plant. Every time one of these natural filtration devices is destroyed in the development of our city, the quality of rainwater that flows into the Río Grande is degraded.

The International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC) and the Texas Commission for Environmental Quality (TCEQ) did studies of toxic materials along the Río Grande from El Paso to Brownsville in 1994 and in 1997. They found Manadas Creek in Laredo to have a high potential for toxic effects on river water quality -- finding excessive levels of chromium, mercury, nickel, thallium, P,P'DDE, chloride, antimony, arsenic, and DDT. Not much has been done to improve the situation over the past eight years. In fact, booming development in the Manadas Creek watershed has resulted in damage and destruction to a large percentage of the green natural filtering system that has historically helped protect the quality of our water.

In 1990, a group of concerned Laredo citizens founded the Río Grande International Study Center. They focused initially on the awful sights and smells found in places along the river, but -- with time, observation, thought, and study -- the group began to realize that our river is really a monitor of unhealthy practices that are going on in both the United States and Mexico.

In one sense our river is a gauge, measuring the environmental quality of activities occurring along its banks. In another sense it is a common water pot from which millions of people on both its banks dip to satisfy their daily needs. As the pot becomes increasingly spoiled, dipping from it can degrade the quality of life for the people who have come to depend on it.

We as a community should not waste our time blaming others for degrading the quality of the Río Grande -- our public water source. Rather, we -- individually and collectively -- should take responsibility for insuring that the development of our own city promotes good water quality.

We should read and study to inform ourselves about quality of life issues that are vital to the future of our community. We should, then, let our representatives in government know of our concerns and insist that they take the actions necessary to make our lives better. This is democracy in action.

Our city has an important choice to make concerning the alignment of Springfield Avenue. What will we citizens do? We could think, “Oh, well. Much of our water-cleansing green space has already been destroyed. This is only one little creek. Worrying about saving this small bit of green space just creates a lot of hassle. Why worry?”

Or, we could see the bigger picture. We could see Laredo continuing to grow and developing into a great city with an adequate supply of clean water and environmental amenities that would make our city a truly desirable place in which to live.

Realizing how small constructive efforts -- expanded by the actions of many informed people -- have had long-lasting positive effects in other places and in other times throughout the history of our great nation, let us phone, email, or write to our Councilpersons, to the Mayor, and to the City Manager to let them know that we will support their efforts in making Laredo a cleaner, greener, and more enjoyable place in which our offspring can live far into the future.

(Dr. Jim Earhart is executive director of the Río Grande International Study Center. Pam Vaughan is secretary of the board of the Río Grande International Study Center.)