Pubdate: Fri, 02 Aug 2013
Source: Daily Democrat (Woodland, CA)
Copyright: 2013 Daily Democrat
Contact:  http://www.dailydemocrat.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3030
Author: Don Frances

POT GROWS CAUSING 'INCREDIBLE ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE' THROUGHOUT REGION

Even in Yolo County, illegal marijuana growing operations are more 
prevalent - and much more destructive - than most people realize.

That's according to government officials tasked with cleaning up the 
messes left behind by pot growers.

At the Bureau of Land Management's Ukiah field office, Gary Sharpe 
estimates he's handled about 60 cleanups over the past five years at 
grow sites dotting the land his office oversees, including in Yolo County.

As one of his colleagues put it, entering sites ruined by pot grows 
is like "walking into hell."

For Sharpe, a supervisory natural resources specialist, the torn-up 
land, redirected streams, piping, wiring, nets, tents and trash are 
awful to behold.

Perhaps worst of all is the countless gallons of chemicals - mostly 
pesticides and heavy fertilizers, many of which are banned in the 
United States - which Sharpe says leave their mark on the land and 
water long after the grow sites are gone.

"Just in the nutrients being added to the water courses, we're 
getting blue-green algae in the water," Sharpe said. "And that's a 
toxic algae. It is adding, I believe strongly, to the problems of 
nutrients in Clear Lake, and algae blooms there."

"And then of course you have all the impacts on the wildlife," Sharpe 
said. Animals get caught in the growers' netting, and fish are dying 
due to "drying-out creeks that have never been dry before."

The result is "incredible environmental damage," including in Yolo 
County, he said.

In the Cache Creek Wilderness area, "Yolo County is very steep and 
inaccessible. And these guys will go to great lengths."

Sharpe mentioned one grow site "above Rumsey, big complex that was 
raided there a couple years ago, with 25,000 plants. That's about a 
mile and quarter in and a 1,100-foot climb."

The growers, he said, "deliberately put them in difficult places to 
get to, they're living there on site. They're desperate to avoid 
anybody else getting up there."

Experienced hikers agree the problem is widespread. Andrew Fulks, 
president of Tuleyome, a Woodland-based environmental nonprofit, says 
he regularly comes across marijuana growing operations - both active 
and defunct - in the Putah Creek and Cache Creek watersheds.

In an email, Fulks wrote of "Amazing amounts of trash and pipe they 
pulled out from the Cache Creek Wilderness, which is where the farm 
water supply for Yolo County comes from. I've seen small grows near 
the creek banks being grown by hippies from the East Coast who 
thought it was legal here, to ravaged hillsides in the remote 
backcountry of the Cold Canyon Reserve where they had hand dug 
reservoirs and diverted tributary water to feed their grow."

Though he's never been a marijuana user, Fulks said he is "strongly 
in favor of legalization and regulation of it solely based on the 
destruction these illegal grows manifest on our public lands."

As a recent example, law enforcement officials raided a site in July 
west of Winters where 2,658 marijuana plants were found growing near 
the banks of Putah Creek. Two men were arrested.

BLM's Sharpe said he isn't a law enforcement official and doesn't 
participate in the raids. Rather, he finds out about them afterward, 
and begins organizing the difficult clean-up efforts.

"When I get to them they've already been raided, and they've been 
basically rendered inoperable by the raiding officers." That includes 
destroying much of the materials found there, "because the growers 
will come back and salvage what they can," he said.

Sharpe brings along sheriff's deputies to secure the site, and 
between two and 15 California Conservation Corps members for much of 
the work, which is paid for largely through grants. They clear brush, 
collect trash, dig up pipes, dismantle dams where the growers have 
dammed up creeks - and usually get it all done in a single day.

"We walk in and walk out," Sharpe explained.

Sharpe also checks for hazardous materials, of which there is plenty 
due to the fertilizers and pesticides.

The biggest site he ever cleaned - in the Cache Creek Wilderness area 
in Lake County - had 44,000 plants, Sharpe said. In that case, the 
group was packed in by Backcountry Horsemen, and refuse hauled out by 
National Guard helicopter.

Mostly, he said, the sites he cleans are between 5,000 and 15,000 plants.

In Yolo County, Sharpe added, the sites are "so remote I've had 
trouble reaching them in a single day with a ground crew." In those 
cases, "I'm going to have to come in with the National Guard."

"That whole area has a number (of grow sites) that I've not been able 
to get to."

And that's just the BLM-owned land - 300,000 acres spanning nine 
counties between Willits and the Sacramento River southward to the 
San Francisco Bay. Sharpe estimates there are half a million plants 
growing illegally on BLM land in Lake County, and almost the same 
number in Mendocino County.

But he said the true scale of the environmental damage is almost 
impossible to know.

"Most people are completely unaware of the impacts," he said. "They 
have no idea it's as bad as it is."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom