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Three-Eyed Fish And Two-Headed Turtles? The Stench Of This River Spanning U.S.-Mexico Border Is Legendary

The river is so foul that rumors swirl about two-headed turtles and three-eyed fish. If you fall in, locals joke, you might sprout a third arm. So go the stories about the New River, whose putrid green water runs like a primordial stew from Mexico’s sprawling city of Mexicali through California’s Imperial Valley. The river, with skull-and-crossbone signs warning about the danger it poses, reminds Calexico resident Carlos Fernandez of a scene in “The Simpsons Movie” where Homer Simpson disposes of pig feces by dumping them into a lake.

OPINION: California Is Dammed Enough Already

Environmental consequences aside, it would seem to make a certain amount of sense to dam a river in order to store and distribute water where and when it is most needed. But what if there’s no river? Or more to the point, what if every river that can be dammed already has been dammed, and the water in those rivers has already been tapped? The value of new, giant dams is extremely limited and costly without new giant rivers to fill them, and California has no such new rivers.