San Diego, California – A NASA instrument aboard the International Space Station has confirmed the presence of sewage contamination spilling into the Pacific Ocean from Mexico—once again drawing attention to the ongoing environmental crisis at the U.S.–Mexico border.
Using a device originally designed to map desert minerals, scientists have now repurposed the Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT) instrument to monitor ocean water quality. In a recent analysis, EMIT detected phycocyanin, a pigment found in cyanobacteria, within a large wastewater plume flowing from the Tijuana River into the ocean near San Diego.
The findings offer sobering confirmation of what many Southern California residents already know too well: raw sewage from Mexico continues to pollute U.S. waters…