The Alamo River ( es, Río Álamo) flows west and north from the

Mexicali Valley Mexicali (; ) is the capital city of the Mexican state of Baja California. The city, seat of the Mexicali Municipality, has a population of 689,775, according to the 2010 census, while the Calexico–Mexicali metropolitan area is home to 1,000, ...

(

Baja California Baja California (; 'Lower California'), officially the Free and Sovereign State of Baja California ( es, Estado Libre y Soberano de Baja California), is a state in Mexico. It is the northernmost and westernmost of the 32 federal entities of Mex ...

) across the

Imperial Valley , photo = Salton Sea from Space.jpg , photo_caption = The Imperial Valley below the Salton Sea. The US-Mexican border runs diagonally across the lower left of the image. , map_image = Newriverwatershed-1-.jpg , map_caption = Map of Imperial ...

(

California California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the m ...

). The river drains into the

Salton Sea The Salton Sea is a shallow, landlocked, highly saline body of water in Riverside and Imperial counties at the southern end of the U.S. state of California. It lies on the San Andreas Fault within the Salton Trough that stretches to the Gul ...

. The New River, Alamo River, and the Salton Sea of the 21st century started in autumn 1904, when the

Colorado River The Colorado River ( es, Río Colorado) is one of the principal rivers (along with the Rio Grande) in the Southwestern United States and northern Mexico. The river drains an expansive, arid watershed that encompasses parts of seven U.S. s ...

, swollen by seasonal rainfall and snow-melt, flowed through a series of three human-engineered openings in the recently constructed levee bank of the

Alamo Canal The Alamo Canal ( es, Canal del Álamo) was a long waterway that connected the Colorado River to the head of the Alamo River. The canal was constructed to provide irrigation to the Imperial Valley. A small portion of the canal was located in th ...

. The resulting flood poured down the canal and

breached Breached was a Canadian rock band from Toronto, Ontario, active from 2010 to 2015. Its members were Bobby Noakes (vocals), Mike Diesel (guitar/vocals), Ryan Alexander (bass), and Neil Uppal (drums). Mike Diesel was a member of the band Age ...

an Imperial Valley dike. The sudden influx of water and the lack of any drainage from the basin resulted in the formation of the Salton Sea; the rivers had re-created a great inland sea in an area that it had frequently inundated before, the

Salton Sink The Salton Sink is the low point of an endorheic basin, a closed drainage system with no outflows to other bodies of water, in the Colorado Desert sub-region of the Sonoran Desert. The sink falls within the larger Salton Trough and separates the ...

. It took slightly less than two years (Mar 1905 to Feb 10, 1907) to control the Colorado River’s inflow to the Alamo Canal and stop the uncontrolled flooding of the Salton Sink, but the canal was effectively channelized with operational headgates by the early part of 1907. The Alamo and New Rivers continued to flow, but at a lesser rate. The river was named after the Spanish name for the Fremont cottonwood that grows in the region. In most places, the river is a vegetation-choked ravine with a small watercourse at the bottom. The

California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment The Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment, commonly referred to as OEHHA (pronounced oh-EEE-ha), is a specialized department within the cabinet-level California Environmental Protection Agency ( CalEPA) with responsibility for evaluatin ...

has issued a safe eatin
advisory
based on mercury, DDTs, PCBs, and selenium.

References

{{Authority control Rivers of Baja California Rivers of Imperial County, California Tributaries of the Salton Sea Imperial Valley Brawley, California Colorado Desert Rivers of Mexico Rivers of Southern California

See also

References