A marijuana plant seized by California's El Dorado County Sheriff's Department in August.
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Marijuana growers worsening California drought
By Eoin O'Carroll | 10.10.09
Large marijuana plots hidden deep in California’s public lands have illegally diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water, compounding shortages caused by the state’s ongoing drought.
Public officials in Mendocino County, a region on California’s north coast known for its lush redwood forests and potent cannabis, have witnessed rivers and creeks drained by the large-scale drug operations.
“They’re using a whole lot of water.” said Lt. Rusty Noe of the Mendocino County sheriff’s office in a telephone interview with the Bright Green Blog.
Lt. Noe noted that police have seized more than 500,000 pot plants this season in Mendocino County alone. Each plant requires about one gallon of water per day. California is entering the fourth year of a severe drought, with residents in some areas facing the first mandatory water restrictions in two decades and farms laying off thousands of workers.
“It’s really affecting our water supply,” said Noe of the illicit growing sites.
Noe also cited other environmental damage caused by the plantations, including the dumping of toxic chemicals (a subject we covered a year ago) and erosion of soil and underbrush.”These camps are just unbelievable,” said Noe, who noted that the problem is getting steadily worse each year.
“It is making a huge resource impact,” Dennis Slota, a hydrologist with the Mendocino County Water Agency, told the Bright Green Blog over the phone. Mr. Slota said that he knew personally of two steelhead trout streams that are now dead from illegal water diversion.
Slota suggested that most of the environmental destruction is caused not by Mendocino’s local pot growers, who have long taken advantage of the county’s mild climate and tolerant views toward the drug, but by mostly Mexican crime syndicates that, in the 1990s, began planting large plots deep in the woods, which they would abandon after the October-November harvest.
His views are echoed by Ron Pugh, a US Forest Service special agent, who was quoted in the spring issue of Terrain, a Northern California environmental magazine:
Says Pugh about the sheer volume of grows, “This is not a hippie thing.” He’s come prepared with a list of comparisons between a “hippie” grow and a DTO site—one maintained by a drug trafficking organization. A traditional garden on public lands, Pugh says, has one or two growers and fewer than fifty plants. The gardener, who lives locally, hikes in every other day or so, carrying water for his plants. Firearms are uncommon, and locations are predictable. “They’re within a quarter mile of a road,” Pugh explains, “and they’re rarely uphill. White guys are lazy.”
The DTO sites, on the other hand, are as remote as the growers can get, often three miles from the nearest road. They contain an average of 6,600 plants, tended by an average of seven growers who live in tents the entire season, from May to October. The growers are aided by scanners, radios, night-vision goggles, an arsenal of weapons, and truckloads of plastic pipe to divert area streams to their plants, sometimes from as far as a half-mile away. When they abandon the site in the fall, they leave behind mountains of trash, about as much trash as a small city dump.
Writing for Blue Living Ideas, a news website that covers water issues, Jennifer Lance notes that only 1 in 8 of those arrested in Mendocino this season for growing marijuana are from the county. She also notes that the county’s district attorney is investigating at least one recently seized grow operation for “environmental crimes” and “water diversion,” on top of drug crimes.
Update: Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington, DC, advocacy group that seeks to remove criminal penalties for marijuana use, obviously has a different take. Read his comment here.
[Hat tip to Blue Living Ideas]
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Editor’s note: For more articles about the environment, see the Monitor’s main environment page, which offers information on many environment topics. Also, check out our Bright Green blog archive and our RSS feed.
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2. Joe User | 10.10.09
To communicate effectively on issues, one must at times must be thorough.
I apologize ahead of time.
“Marijuana growers worsening California drought”
Who is?
Interestingly enough, so many equivalent complaints and sensational headlines would disappear if people could just safely grow a natural plant in the privacy of their own home for their own responsible use that would be of no business, harm or concern to anyone else.
* No more sensational California lands destroyed or water “stolen”.
* No more of the federal government causing the actual vacuums that are filled by the lowest from of criminals and opportunists with the least to lose to traffic Marijuana. They put the criminals in power.
* No more outrages black market prices that crack addicts kill for, which is also caused by government putting it in the hands of the lowest of the low real drug traffickers in the 80’s which have mantained the strangle hold, and prohibition has kept them in business.
* No more millions of dollars needed by these law agencies to destroy people’s lives by imprisoning people for personal use since that is all that would be left, no trafficking, killing, ruining peoples lives in jail (the real crime of humanity), stealing water and land, blah…
Why it won’t happen?
Money in the pockets of existing drug companies is too lucrative and having a multipurpose Aloe plant is **** too dangerous if people really realized. Just 1 of 100 things is like women of the world would unite if they just knew the menstrual cramp benefits, that’s just 1 of 100 things that would be turned upside down and not at $40 dollars a pill from your precious FDA.
Secondly, the many jobs people have dedicated to just the war on Marijuana, they want to keep their jobs and the agencies want the existing funding they are currently getting and more not less.
Thirdly, if it were legal, they wouldn’t proliferate sensational headlines repeated by unknowing parrots that twist the minds of people who don’t know any better with political spins to further agendas.
I realize some, if not most, of these government legislators think they are doing the ‘right’ thing. It’s just that their complete ignorance on the subject, especially with no first hand knowledge or experience leaves them very incapable to understand the subject well enough to decide anything on it.
It’s a shame people cannot realize the government are largely to blame for the specific issues they lay at the very foot of Marijuana. It’s almost like the governments money tree, make the problem then pay yourself to fix it. All along making sure the populace follows suit and supports the government keeping their money tree growing.
Who’s plant is causing the most destruction and the most healing?
Which should be outlawed by the letter of “true human justice”?
3. Larry Farwell | 10.10.09
Eoin O’Carroll seems to have little understanding of water and hydrology. Eoin uses comments from a sheriff who obviously knows nothing about water and hydrology. More comments from a County hydrologist that seem adrift from any sense of proportion. Finally, a USFS policeman who says white guys are lazy but then says they carry in 400 pounds of water (50 gallons) every day for their 50 plants.
A pot garden with 6,600 plants using one gallon each per day (too bad they forget to mention that much less is used until they reach maturity) requires a diversion of only .01 cubic foot a second (one cfs =7.48 gallons) to provide the 6,600 gallons each day. I would love to visit ANY real trout stream that flows at such a minimal rate yet maintains the cold temperatures necessary for trout survival.
Please try some actual reporting that involves thought and understanding before releasing more “news” that degrades public knowledge.
4. Lindsay | 10.10.09
You know what would save these guys loads of money? Legalizing hemp. Not only could we end deforestation all together, but industrial hemp farms would give the government a better idea of who is using water and why.
Hemp CAN save our world; it is only through the invention of technology and our own war on a plant that we have come into such a dire position in terms of environmental damage.
It is high time we WAKE UP and smell the solution in hemp.
6. Alex | 10.10.09
Legalize pot and these people will no longer have any need to grow pot for their gangs. Instead, large companies would control how much is being grown and how much water to use.
7. Eoin | 10.10.09
Larry Fallwell, you bring up some excellent points. I was also struck by the USFS agent who called guys who hike a quarter mile through the woods with a few dozen gallons of water every day “lazy.” That agent must have quite the work ethic! Say what you will about the drug trade, but it’s not for the idle.
And you’re right that 6,600 plants isn’t enough to drain a stream of any decent size. (6,600 gallons is roughly the equivalent of the average household usage of 66 Americans, not counting the water that goes into making they may purchase, such as groceries, consumer products, and, in some instances, marijuana).
But consider that a half million plants have been seized in this past season. And ask yourself what percentage of the total yield that represents. (For what it’s worth, most law enforcement groups say that drug seizures represent about 10 percent of the total.) And now remember that these plants were seized all in one county. The stuff is grown all over the state.
Do California’s marijuana growers consume more water than the state’s manufacturers? No way. Than the state’s golf courses? Probably not. But when officials from what is among the most tolerant places in the country when it comes to pot say that this is a serious problem, I think it’s worth a story.
8. Ifinallywokeup | 10.10.09
If you’re like me, you used to see articles like this & say, “good, the drug dealers are being put out of business.” But, check Google news search & you’ll find a flood of drug arrests everyday. So, what gives if we’re making any headway on this problem? Shouldn’t the arrests go down & taper off? But, they only increase year after year. This wouldn’t be possible if their wasn’t even more people taking the place of those busted. So, I started doing some research. Marijuana/cannabis accounts for 85% of all illicit drugs used & prohibition makes it easier for kids to get pot than alcohol. Pot is everywhere & it’s not going away. Recent polls show that you’re like me. I’ve woken up to the fact that the use of pot by adults is far less dangerous than alcohol or tobacco. So, why hasn’t the govt figured out that we need to regulate the sale of cannabis to adults by licensed merchants? Just like we do with alcohol & tobacco? Push criminals out of the pot trade via legalization, already.
9. Weedhater | 10.10.09
Why doesn’t America legalize all criminal activity? That way we can claim to be 100% crime free. People and their pot, what a joke! Does anybody think that Americans handle their (legal and regulated) alcohol in a responsible manner….go to a bar on a Saturday night.
10. SoCali | 10.10.09
Honestly, would you guys expect anything else from the christian “science” monitor? A bias media outlet taking things out of context from a bias cop… what a surprise. Legalize it already.
11. Mark Bruns | 10.11.09
Stop judging; start fixing. Legalize, TAX, regulate and treat.
It will get used anyway — so collect VERY HEAVY taxes [just as coercively as drug lords would collect ~their~ money if that what it takes to collect the appropriate amount of revenue] to discourage use of unnecessarily cheap drugs. Use those tax revenues [that current system supports, but now fund CRIMINAL operations] to aggressively, thoroughly and exhaustively REGULATE the network. Use a portion of the taxes on the product to also pay for treatment of abuse and to discourage anything but medicinal use. Now that tobacco is [beginning to be] taxed, the tobacco industry and governmental agencies provides some of the boilerplate for how this can be done.
We do not have the luxury of the moralistic preaching — God never has / never will hand off the decision of who goes to heaven or **** to any human being — so get over this. We don’t need to condone drug use; we need to legalize, tax, REGULATE and treat [so that we can minimize the cost to society].
Stop judging; start fixing.
12. LRC | 10.11.09
#9 weedhater:
We feel that the criminalization of marijuana is nonsensical in the first place. I.E. we feel that people should go to jail for murder, rape, DUI, theft, etc. We just don’t believe that people should go to jail for inhaling the vaporized essences of a plant. Just because you put your fingers in your ears and sing lalala doesn’t hide the fact that there is a world of difference between murder and smelling (heated) flowers. I agree that alcohol is a real problem for some people, but I am not so high and mighty as to believe that I know what’s best for everybody else. You do know that there is weed everywhere, right? Legalizing it wouldn’t make weed suddenly appear everywhere, it’s already here. It would just provide people with the freedom to make their own decisions for better or worse.
As an example, someone I know has smoked pot ever day for years, and is going outside to smoke some more in a few minutes. This person lives in the state that ranks #50 in marijuana use, and can still get all the weed he wants whenever he wants. This person is courteous and friendly. This person donates time and money to charity. This person holds the door for little old ladies. The only crimes this person commits are the smoking of marijuana and driving 4 mph over the speed limit (never at the same time). Please explain to me why this person shouldn’t be free to smoke a plant of his choice in the privacy of his own property? Why exactly does this person need to go to jail?
13. dan strayer | 10.11.09
If California is so concerned about wasting water, then why are they growing rice in the desert? It is a low value subsidized crop which could be grown in any number of places in the world more appropriate than California. Also, the comments above about the actual volumes of water taken from a trout stream are well founded.
14. anon | 10.11.09
There is PLENTY of water in California. The drought is 100% man made by Sacramento. They are intentionally creating a drought to protect wildlife.
It’s time we stand up to them prop 13 style.
15. Pata | 10.11.09
Until last month I was in absolute, clear headed, logically pure agreement with all of you legalizers.
But then I started learning from a painfully experienced group of people.
I hope all of you functional users continue to be functional and safe at all speeds. But Marijuana is not the benign agent I have always believed in. What I do believe is that we all need to get a lot more information and understanding about the very real problems orbiting this easily grown plant.
Screaming at the messengers is not a sign of lucidity. There are wealthy, organized crime syndicates, guys in expensive suits, already geared up to create a Marijuana cigarette industry if the drug is legalized. This would not seem to be a progressive step for society. The medical costs of tobacco use are astronomical. We have no systematic, longitudinal studies of the deleterious effects of Marjuana, yet.
Home grown Marijuana has its obvious downsides, too, with members of my corporation needing to have their hands held and walked through even mildly challenging tasks. How much longer will they be employed here? These people are becoming more incompetent and less cogent by the month.
It’s a tragedy of immense proportions. Even highly functional decades-long users can crash into dysfunction without seeming provocation. And they have the most horrific challenge in recovery, on average, I am told by people with many cycles of experience successfully rehabilitating them.
Without a doubt, I am sorry to have my former beliefs upended. I was a lot happier with the old ones.
16. JimC | 10.11.09
I love it that this article was put in the “bright green blog”. How can you get “greener” than marijuana. . . lol
Thanks for the laugh !
17. Lucas | 10.11.09
#15 Pata
It’s not entirely clear what made you change your mind. You say that your co-workers have lost functionality because they all smoke pot (I wonder where you work)? Are you trying to say they will somehow become more functional by being put in jail? I fail to understand how that will help. If it’s just that you want them to lose their jobs or quit the pot because they are hampering the company, you should probably take the issue up with their supervisors.
I hope you will think about the fact that discouraging marijuana use (and maybe firing people over it) and wanting all marijuana users to be sent to jail are two very different positions.
18. lh | 10.12.09
If marijuana is legalized, the drug dealers will will still be illegal by creating a black market to avoid taxes. There will be a increased burden on the medical care system from marijuana smoking due to declining health from long term use. Marijuana is a “gateway drug” to stronger drugs. People who advocate legalizing marijuana, just want to sit around and get high.
19. JL (France) | 10.12.09
If tobacco and alcool are legal, why not the other drugs too ? As far as I know practically nobody kills for a cigarette or a glass of whisky. Nobody would any longer for any drug if it were at an affordable price. This said I hate drugs, all of them.
20. Druid Man | 10.12.09
Illegally diverted hundreds of millions of gallons of water?
So if they use the 1 gal per day This means there are 100 million plants in CA?
Inflated.
Let’s get some evidence for this claim. 500,000 plants in Mendo’. No mention how many were on private property. What is the ratio of plants on Gov property?
“The gardener, who lives locally, hikes in every other day or so, carrying water for his plants.”
Ever carry 5 gal of water? No single person can sustain even a small garden by packing in water. Wait, unless the plants use less water. But that would mean the hundreds of millions of gallons is false.
21. Joe User | 10.12.09
@ Pata
“There are wealthy, organized crime syndicates, guys in expensive suits, already geared up to create a Marijuana cigarette industry if the drug is legalized. This would not seem to be a progressive step for society.”
This absolutely would not happen if we can grow a plant in our home. It may happen for the first few months, but that would quickly change.
An ounce grown in your own home for $20 - $50 that would be better than anything on the street for $500 will remove any and all moneys wrapped up with this thing. Buy seeds and that is it.
When you can grow your own super Aloe plant then nobody can sell anything. Legalization removes all the current money being made on the war on marijuana by the govt., the drug kingpins, and would severely effect the over priced drugs and drug companies by supersede results to patients with a free herb.
$ is exactly why it won’t be legalized. Love of money runs this world.
22. Jojenn | 10.12.09
Legalization will not stop this crime on mother earth. What the government is discussing in California is not willy nilly everyone grow your own we will be a happy and stoned society. No, they are talking manufacture and tax, just like cigarettes. Marijuana is also just as if not more carcenogenic when smoked as cigarettes, so gee lets just legalize something else with long term health effects, but I digress So as long as you have to buy from someone, the Cartels will gladly supply and gladly grow in our beloved forests diverting resources to supply their plants.
Legalizers use the excuse it is a God given plant, but the one huge difference between the way it was used in ancient times and now is addiction. It was used as a method for enlightenment, as a religious experience, not as a day to day, week to week, month to month, etc. etc. habit. Wake up, quit looking through your legalization drug haze. Legalizing won’t fix this, regulation won’t fix this, the only thing that will is quit being addicted, get help. Let mother earth heal.
23. Dan | 10.12.09
@ 17. lh
<>
True, BATF currently prosecutes folks who skip taxes on alcohol and terbakky. Most folks buy their alcohol and Cigs legally, and are willing to pay the taxes (not happy, but willing).
<>
personal freedom and choice, vs prison… hmmm. I wonder what the medical costs are where it’s legal (Amsterdam, California, etc)
<> I don’t believe this is true, especially if you remember you are taking 99% of the criminal element out of trafficking and possession.
>
True, they just want to do it legally, and are not forcing you to.
Also look at the prison system population and repeat offenders that would not be produced.
24. J-P | 10.12.09
Hmmm, let’s see, who am I going to believe when it comes to this article? A cop, a man whose job depends on his character, or a bunch of people who freely admit to using a mind-altering substance?
Marijuana isn’t harmful! It’s all natural! I should be free to do what I like! They’re just greedy!
Yeah, I think I’ll stick with the opinions of those people who like living in reality.
25. JustMe | 10.12.09
There are many drugs that shouldn’t be legalized and so the organized cartels will always be involved in manufacturing them. Marijuana, however, is a relatively benign drug which is grown, not manufactured; it’s unfortunate that this plant continues to be associated with scumbag traffickers.
26. Buddesatva | 10.12.09
California is a water problem. Placing blame on pot growers is pretty silly. Growing water cress in the desert is STUPID. Building cities and suburbs where there are no resources is STUPID. Everyone wants to live in sunny California, OK but pay the cost. The water problem in California is not new. It has been a problem for over a hundred years and the people of California have made it worse, much worse. Californians need to pay the cost of using water. Stop irrigating the DESERT. Start paying for the water used and start investing in water purification.
27. Rick | 10.12.09
Drugs in California will never be legalized as long as millions of dollars are going into the politicians’ campaign funds courtesy of the “correctional officers’ union,” or whatever it’s called. The real crime here is that prisons have become an industry and, unfortunately, a rapidly growing one. These prisons must be filled with criminals, or in the case of drug users, “criminals.” The drug laws are a cash cow for law enforcement, lawyers and the prison industry. All at the expense of the taxpayer and the poor sod who gets busted for smoking a joint, doing a line or selling a few ounces. Criminalizing drugs does nothing to address the health problems caused by said drugs, it simply creates more problems. The laws create the crime. The laws are the crime.
28. Weedhater | 10.12.09
#12LRC, As a matter of fact, LRC, I do realize pot is everywhere. I also know quite a few people who smoke pot and yes,generally speaking, they are a nice group of people(and I’m pretty sure that they would open doors for little old ladies too). At the same time I know one who was fired from his job for smoking pot on break; one who quit his job ($18.00/hr) because his company was instituting drug testing policy(and he wasn’t giving up his pot) and one who’s failed a test but was given another chance; guess who isn’t staying clean. All three people worked at different companies. It seems like pot was in charge of their decision making. Is this the freedom of choice you spoke of? There are tons of negative effects of pot smoking. Google it, but I think you already know the truth.
And no, I don’t think pot smokers should go to jail(heavy fine maybe), pot growers, on the other hand, jail time and plenty of it.
29. dom youngross | 10.13.09
Mendocino county is our own Helmand Province in the making.
Legalization of marihuana for commercial exploitation is a downward spiral.
30. Mike Moxcey | 10.13.09
Just one more fact that prohibition is a waste of time, money and other resources. Legalization would legitimize those farmers just as much as the ones who plow fields twice a year (talk about environmental degradation) but who take care of their land and pay taxes and live in the community and act just like normal citizens.
31. Bruce Mirken | 10.13.09
Despite the comments from official sources quoted in this piece, the problem is not marijuana — which, as an agricultural commodity, is pretty unremarkable and not unusually water-intensive. The problem
is prohibition, which keeps the state’s immense marijuana industry outside the normal regulations that apply to other farmers and puts it in an entirely unregulated criminal underground.
If we treated marijuana like we treat beer, wine, and liquor, it would be grown by farmers
who — like those who now grow wine grapes or barley and hops for beer — would have to abide by labor, environmental, and water-conservation laws. In California, that includes water allocations that are subject to reduction in drought years. It is a common rhetorical trick for officials to blame the problems caused by prohibition on marijuana, but the real problem is bad policies producing bad (and entirely predictable) results.
32. ME | 10.13.09
Paragraph four currently “farms laying of thousands of workers.”
should be “farms laying off”
EDIT!
34. sickofit | 10.17.09
The argument over legalization is secondary; why are we allowing Mexican mafia to do anything in California’s forests without intervention? Send some special forces troops to go in and clean out the forest. The best defense is a good offense.
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1. Jason | 10.10.09
Just one more reason to end prohibition and the cash cow for the cartels,,,Ma and pop growers are slowly diverting money from the drug cartels hands and back into us american growers.Slowly one medical state at a time..