Pubdate: Sun, 21 Oct 2012
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2012 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Matt Weiser

MEDICAL POT GROWERS RAVAGE CALIFORNIA FOREST HABITAT

California's annual medical marijuana harvest is just about done, but 
this year brings a new revelation sweeping the nascent industry: The 
feel-good herb may not, in fact, be so good for the environment.

 From golden Sierra foothills to forested coastal mountains, an 
explosion of pseudo-legal medical marijuana farms has dramatically 
changed the state's landscape over the past two years.

A rush to profit from patient demand for pot has resulted in 
irresponsible forest clearing, illegal stream diversions, and 
careless pesticide and fertilizer use that has polluted waterways and 
killed wildlife, state and local government officials said.

The problem has become so big and so unregulated that the California 
Department of Fish and Game has resorted to aerial surveys to assess 
its scale. It has a new high-resolution, computer-controlled camera 
mounted in the belly of an aircraft to help pinpoint problem marijuana areas.

In a recent flight over Nevada County, game warden Jerry Karnow was 
"astounded" at the increase in obvious marijuana grows visible from 
the air. They pop out as tightly clustered patches of vivid green 
plants in an otherwise sunbaked landscape, usually surrounded by tall fences.

In the course of a 90-minute flight, the visible grows numbered in 
the hundreds, often carved out of mixed oak and pine forests on 
steep, erosion-prone hillsides.

"I flew this last year and I'm seeing a whole bunch more than I did 
then," said Karnow, a warden in the region for 15 years. "This year 
it was unbelievable."

Medical marijuana grows fall into a different category from illegal 
"trespass grows," which tend to be hidden on public land and 
maintained by criminal organizations. Pot grown for medicinal use is 
found on private land and legally permitted under state law.

But the environmental problems they create are similar, in large part 
because the state's ability to regulate marijuana cultivation remains 
hazy. Though state law makes it legal to grow and use medical 
marijuana, it provides little guidance on how to regulate it.

In addition, medicinal grows remain illegal under federal law, 
putting state and local agencies on uncertain ground when they 
attempt to set limits.

"The impacts of water withdrawal, herbicide and pesticide use, 
unpermitted grading  all of these things in any other legal industry 
would be regulated. And we know how to regulate them," said Mark 
Lovelace, a Humboldt County supervisor who is grappling with the dilemma.

"In this case you can't bring them into compliance because the 
activity they are doing is fundamentally illegal according to the 
federal government."

1996 law didn't set limits

California voters legalized marijuana for medicinal purposes in 1996 
when they approved Proposition 215. The law allowed patients with a 
doctor's recommendation to possess and grow marijuana in limited 
quantities, but did not set clear limits.

The Legislature tried to fix that loophole with Senate Bill 420, 
which took effect in 2004. It allowed Proposition 215 patients to 
cultivate no more than six mature or 12 immature plants. But the law 
was challenged in the state Supreme Court, which ruled in 2010 that 
the limit on plant numbers was invalid.

Many growers took this as endorsement to cultivate all the marijuana 
they wanted. This may have triggered the explosion of medicinal grow 
sites across the state that is now prompting environmental concern.

"The belief is to get what you can while the growing's good, because 
it won't last forever," said Lovelace, who supports legal use of 
medicinal marijuana. "There are a lot of folks out there who just 
don't care about the environmental harm they are doing."

In California, local governments have authority over land use. They 
issue permits to grade new roads, terrace hillsides for agriculture 
and build ponds. When the matter exceeds local authority, such as 
withdrawing water from a stream to irrigate a crop, they require a 
property owner to obtain permission from the appropriate state or 
federal agency.

But their efforts to regulate medicinal marijuana cultivation have 
been largely unsuccessful.

In 2008, the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors adopted an 
ordinance regulating marijuana cultivation. It was a groundbreaking 
attempt to legitimize the medical marijuana industry and address 
environmental concerns and nuisance complaints from neighbors.

Under the ordinance, growers paid the county $50 per marijuana plant, 
each of which was then marked with a unique numbered "zip-tie" tag. 
The fee covered county regulatory costs, including inspections to 
ensure compliance with environmental standards. The grower industry 
welcomed the move and helped draft the rules.

But in January, the county decided to gut the ordinance after the 
U.S. Department of Justice warned that it violated federal law by 
permitting growers to cultivate a federally controlled substance. The 
notice included a warning that local government officials might be 
prosecuted individually.

This put a fast chill over other local government attempts to control 
the environmental effects of the rapidly growing industry.

Stream illegally dammed

Many marijuana growers strive to minimize environmental harm. Among 
other things, they want to create a product that is safe for humans 
to consume, free from harmful chemicals.

Patricia Smith, a Nevada County grower, adheres to a voluntary 
industry program called "Clean Green Certification" which licenses 
marijuana that meets certain environmental standards. She also 
supports appropriate government regulation.

"I don't care if you're giving it away for free. Certain safety 
standards have to be met," said Smith, who chairs the county's 
chapter of Americans for Safe Access, a marijuana advocacy group. 
"I'll be the first to say not every person that is growing out there 
is an ethical person or a steward of the environment. I've seen some 
horrific things."

In one recent case, game warden Karnow cited a Nevada County grower 
for illegally damming a stream that flows into Dry Creek, a tributary 
of the American River that supports salmon and steelhead. The grower 
excavated an 8-foot-tall earthen dam across the creek so he could 
pump water to a giant bladder, which then fed his cultivation site.

The grower pleaded no contest on Aug. 27 to a misdemeanor charge of 
illegally diverting the stream.

"He didn't realize, apparently, the havoc he was wreaking by 
diverting the stream. And many of them don't," said Nevada County 
District Attorney Clifford Newell, whose office prosecuted the case. 
"They flaunt it being a natural herb. But many times there's nothing 
natural about the plants they grow."

Part of the problem is that marijuana consumers are often blind to 
the methods used to grow the crop  where the pot they are smoking was 
grown, or whether it was treated with pesticides.

"There's a huge population of people who eat organic food for 
breakfast and don't have any awareness at all of how their cannabis 
was cultivated or harvested," said Alison Sterling Nichols, a 
Humboldt County environmental consultant working with county leaders 
to reduce the environmental cost of marijuana growing.

"They don't even think about what was put on it or what trees came 
down to plant it. There's just a complete disconnect."

Pot grown in clearcuts

The consequences of that disconnect are especially acute in Humboldt 
and Mendocino counties, long the hotbed of marijuana cultivation in the state.

The demand for medical marijuana has produced thousands of new 
clearcuts in North Coast forests. In each case, dozens of trees are 
cut, the land is graded for planting, and water is procured  usually 
from the nearest stream  to irrigate the crop.

The region is struggling to restore endangered coho salmon in its 
coastal creeks. Millions of dollars have been spent on restoration 
projects, and logging and agriculture are under strict regulation. At 
the same time, marijuana cultivation has exploded.

"What I've seen is kind of similar to how logging used to take place 
back in the early days, before laws were really strong," said Scott 
Bauer, an environmental scientist and coho recovery coordinator at 
the Department of Fish and Game office in Eureka.

"It's this gold-rush mentality right now, where everybody's out to 
get their piece of the action. So you see these grows have gotten 
substantially bigger over the past couple of years."

One reason is that Proposition 215 allows medical marijuana users to 
form "collectives" to grow marijuana. A single grower can gather the 
doctor certificates from many patients and grow marijuana on their 
behalf. Instead of one person growing six mature plants, large grows 
have become common with hundreds of plants cultivated on behalf of 
many patients.

Bauer said some growers fell trees, push them over the edge of a 
hillside, then bulldoze dirt on top of the trees to create flat 
planting areas. The bulldozed trees eventually rot, and in the next 
big storm, the piled soil cascades into the creek below, burying 
fish-spawning habitat.

Most of these grows get water from the nearest stream, Bauer said. 
Normally this requires a stream alteration permit from Fish and Game. 
But many growers either don't know that or don't care, and set about 
engineering makeshift dams and ponds.

Wildlife put at risk

Growers are tapping this water when wildlife need it most. The North 
Coast is known for its heavy rainfall. But that usually stops by 
June, and wildlife must survive through summer and fall on water that 
fills the streams from springs and seeps. This is also when marijuana 
plants demand the most water.

Often water cannot be delivered by gravity flow to a cultivation 
site. So growers run diesel generators to power water pumps, which in 
turn fill storage tanks. The pumps may only run a few hours a day, 
but that can be enough to do serious harm.

"During that time, there is a dewatering process that will occur for 
hundreds of feet below the pump site," said Jackie Krug, a Humboldt 
County game warden. "You may not even realize the impacts you've just 
had, but you've just killed everything in that stretch of stream."

State officials are caught in the same legal bind that precludes 
local governments from regulating the industry. Fish and Game, for 
instance, is happy to consider issuing streambed alteration permits 
to marijuana growers, but only under a kind of "don't ask, don't tell" policy.

"If somebody were to call and say, 'I'm diverting water, I need a 
permit,' we're not going to ask what that diversion is for," said Bauer.

Fish and Game is working to assess the industrywide water demand on 
the North Coast. It will start by examining a single watershed using 
aerial surveys to count marijuana grows. The goal is to understand 
how the industry is affecting the regional environment.

Others hope consumer and grower education help address the problem.

"As long as we can't regulate it as a community, we have to rely on 
it being successfully self-regulated, which is rare in any industry," 
said Nichols. "It's just time to be less greedy and more responsible."
- ---
MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom