McALLEN, Texas (Border Report) — The border city of Laredo is studying whether repeated patrols by border agents recently caused a pipe to burst and a massive amount of sewage to spill.
City officials on Friday are scheduled to tour the area to see if the Nov. 25 bursting of a pipe — which carries raw sewage over a section of Zacate Creek — could be caused by old age and erosion or other factors, like repeated law enforcement patrols in the area, Laredo City Councilwoman Melissa Cigarroa told Border Report on Thursday.
“Our concern is that that’s where Border Patrol does a lot of crossing, because it’s right there by the river,” she said.
Cigarroa cautioned that she is not certain that Border Patrol activity is to blame.
“They run up and down that area doing patrolling. And so is that contributing to the erosion that created the conditions that the pipe might fail, or is the pipe just an old pipe?” she said. “Erosion occurs on the riverbank all the time. Is it Border Patrol, or is it normal? But there we’ve just seen significant erosion from the patrolling of Border Patrol. I don’t have any information to say that it is that, but that’s where the conversation kind of is just, just so we can figure it out and make sure that when they replace the pipe, it stays fixed.”
The city’s environmental services director is among those scheduled to study the area on Friday.
Border Report asked the U.S. Border Patrol if agents could affect the sewage pipes in Laredo, and is awaiting a response.
Over 100,000 gallons of sewage spilled into Zacate Creek on Nov. 25, near where it feeds into the Rio Grande. This was due to a break in a 52-inch wastewater pipe, city officials said.
The spill affected the riverbanks in South Laredo and cleanup efforts were quickly started. Officials also notified the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
A bypass wastewater line was installed and city officials said the water in the area was safe to drink.
The City of Laredo has been plagued with several aging pipes bursting since 2019, prompting officials to issue numerous boil-water notices, sometimes for weeks at a time.
The latest situation occurred in early October and caused the city’s 260,000 residents to boil water for 12 days after dangerous E. coli was found in the city’s water system. That incident was blamed on illegal or faulty water connections to the city’s water system.
Millions of dollars in federal, state and local funds recently have gone to improve the lands and water of Zacate Creek, which is located on the banks of the Rio Grande across from Nuevo Laredo, Mexico.
The City of Laredo in April announced that $7.6 million in funding was going to rehabilitate the area, as well as develop a 22-acre Zacate Creek Green District Corridor where new hike and bike trails will be added.
Zacate Creek includes a stunning ancient waterfall area surrounded by rocks, but it has been largely abandoned by the public because it is across from a dilapidated sewage facility in Nuevo Laredo that has long spewed toxic waste into the Rio Grande and has fouled the area.
Earlier this year, Mexico’s federal government received an $81 million loan from NADBank to repair the sewage facility, and construction efforts are underway.
The latest sewage spill was caused by a pipe entirely on the U.S. side, contributing to the ecological demise of the sensitive region, Border Report has learned.
Officials with the nonprofit Rio Grande International Study Center are expected to be among those studying the area on Friday. The organization studies the Rio Grande and its watershed in South Texas.
Sandra Sanchez can be reached at SSanchez@BorderReport.com.