Pubdate: Sun, 05 Jul 2015
Source: Sacramento Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2015 The Sacramento Bee
Contact: http://mapinc.org/url/0n4cG7L1
Website: http://www.sacbee.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/376
Author: Jane Braxton Little
Note: Jane Braxton Little, a freelance writer, covers science, 
natural resources and rural Northern California from Plumas County.

ENFORCE ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATIONS ON ILLEGAL POT GROWERS

Pot is killing coho salmon. Trickle by trickle, spring by tiny 
spring, the cold, clear water these fish need to survive is going to weed.

Illegal marijuana cultivation is widely recognized as an 
environmental menace, polluting streams and forests with pesticides 
and damaging wildlife and habitat by bulldozing trees and soil to 
create grow sites. Less well known are the impacts of water diverted 
to pot plants and their cumulative effects on coho salmon, Chinook 
salmon and steelhead trout, all threatened species.

Scott Bauer, who has been documenting these effects as lead author of 
a scientific study, had bad news when he returned last week from a 
four-day research trip in Trinity County: The last little dribbles 
coming out of streams are being diverted for marijuana.

"We're finding dry streams everywhere - 30 and counting," said Bauer, 
a senior environmental scientist with the California Department of 
Fish and Wildlife.

Seeps, springs and other low-flow water sources typically fill small 
feeder streams to Redwood Creek, the Eel and other coastal rivers, 
where ocean-going salmon species start and end their lives. In three 
of his four study areas, Bauer estimates that water demand for 
marijuana cultivation is diverting all of the available flow. And 
more: "People are actually trucking water into grow sites," he said.

Couple that with California's fourth-year drought and expand it to an 
entire watershed? "You've lost that whole run of fish," Bauer said.

He blames an explosion in marijuana production that began with the 
passage of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. Like the California 
Gold Rush, the "green rush" has created a chaos of cultivation by 
outside growers driven by a crazed fixation on the money to be made. 
California claimed 49 percent of the nation's $2.7 billion pot sales 
in 2014. Cultivation doubled between 2008 and 2012, and Bauer 
projects it will double again based on his recent field observations.

Ninety-nine percent of these grows are unregulated: no pesticide 
permits, no dumping permits and, most important for coho and 
steelhead, no rights to use or divert the water.

The escalating environmental damage screams for regulation. Many laws 
are already in place. California has long had a system for permitting 
water diversions through a division of the State Water Resources 
Control Board. State biologists like Bauer recently gained increased 
authority to cite and fine growers for violating minimum stream-flow 
standards and constructing fish barriers.

Most growers, however, are simply ignoring these regulations, carving 
pot gardens into the remote hillsides of the so-called Emerald 
Triangle and every other backwoods around the state with enough water 
to support a crop. New regulations, governing licensing, product 
testing and marketing, were promised when medical marijuana was 
approved. They simply never materialized.

While recreational pot may be legalized as soon as 2016, the coho cannot wait.

Marijuana cultivation is a well-established, billion-dollar 
California industry. It needs to behave like one.

Some growers are collecting rainwater to irrigate their plants and 
generally taking responsibility for their product's environmental 
effects. Several cannabis associations are working with Sen. Mike 
McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and other legislators to create an 
industrywide regulatory framework for marijuana cultivation. But the 
vast majority of pot is farmed by rogue growers whose rape-and-run 
mentality is destroying streams and threatening to eliminate salmon, 
steelhead and several frogs species. At a legislative hearing last 
week, Charlton Bonham, state Fish and Wildlife director, said the 
department has been contacted 24,000 times in the last year on 
reports of illegal water usage.

Responsible growers need to champion their industry. They need to 
stand up for the environment - start a bumper sticker crusade that 
says "Another pothead for steelhead - and salmon."

The rest of us need to push legislators to give marijuana cultivation 
the same environmental scrutiny we apply to logging, gold mining and 
other extraction industries. We are now aware of the catastrophic 
effects of dewatered streams on salmon. Let's hope it's not too little too late.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom