TIJUANA, MX
TIJUANA
Ecological Sanitation
San Diego is a corridor of industry where 13.5% of the population lives
in informal settlements. Many of these
settlements do not have any sewage treatment systems and their wastewater is draining through the streets to the Tijuana River Estuary.
a multitude of solutions
for squatter communities
including:
erosion control
wastewater filtration
building materials
Inverting the notion of sewer effluents and stormwater runoff as problems, we facilitate watershed literacy and wastewater management enabling local stewardship of the ecosystem and public health.
Community Economics
Integrated into a green infrastructure approach to community development, wastewater-loving timber bamboo delivers thousands of useful technologies from home building, to bicycle frames and charcoal filtration.
Trans-agency Partnership
Tijuana River National Estuarine Research Reserve, NOAA and local community groups.
The First Urban Biofilter Workshop
Urban Biofilter hosted a 30-person workshop in the Tijuana neighborhood of San Bernardo to help restore the flow of water to the local river system. As is the case with many of the informal settlements in the area, San Bernardo does not have a centralized sewage treatment system. This means that wastewater from San Bernardo simply drains through the streets to the Tijuana River Estuary, one of the last 24 estuaries remaining in the country.
In this community, each side street becomes a tributary to the main street, Calle Amanecer, which eventually flows to the estuary, dramatically impacting the water quality and aquatic ecosystem. These open channels also pose a serious health concern, as a vector for contamination, putting the local people at a greater risk of contracting hepatitis and staph infections, mosquito-borne diseases, and diarrhea.
During the course of the workshop, participants lined the channel with gravel to reduce human exposure to the water and replanted the surrounding area with locally collected native willows to improve water quality, provide erosion control and begin habitat restoration. The group also planted a small pilot crop of bamboo. Now, Urban Biofilter is hoping to expand this pilot project to address the wastewater infrastructure of the additional 1.2 million Tijuana residents who live in informal communities.
Thanks to Oscar, Miriam and Arianna, for a beautiful and inspiration visit!
We hope for much more collaboration.