Pubdate: Thu, 3 Dec 2009
Source: Chico News & Review, The (CA)
Copyright: 2009 Chico Community Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.newsreview.com/chico/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/559
Author: Shannon Rooney
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?208 (Environmental Issues)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topic/Proposition+215

Growing Pains

POT CULTIVATION CAUSES ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC-SAFETY CONCERNS

Outdoor adventurers trekking through unfamiliar territories may want 
to consider equipment other than backpacks and walking sticks. Hazmat 
suits and bulletproof vests may be in order.

That's because large-scale marijuana-growing operations in the most 
remote reaches of California's national forests increasingly 
compromise both the environment and public safety.

Steve Collins, sergeant with the Marijuana Unit of the Butte County 
Sheriff's Office, said growers often divert streams and sometimes dam 
them and add chemicals to the water supply, affecting everything 
downstream--including wildlife, humans and plants. Growers bathe and 
wash clothes in the streams. Sometimes the water diversions dry up 
entire drainages within a watershed.

Additionally, Collins said, growers frequently clear--sometimes 
clear-cut--mountainous areas for grow sites (which can include 
terracing). These areas are then prone to significant erosion.

Law enforcement officials say the illegal growers--often Mexican 
nationals working for drug-trafficking organizations--inflict much 
environmental damage to forests, water and wildlife. Common problems 
include illegal use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.

Growers use rodenticides to kill small crop-eating animals, but the 
poison is ingested by other mammals and birds, leaving poisoned 
carcasses that continue to poison the food chain. The same growers, 
who camp at the sites, illegally shoot and eat wildlife, including 
deer, bears and birds. Trash--pesticide containers, chemical 
fertilizer bags, camp waste--abounds at the sites and may empty into streams.

The Marijuana Unit raided a grow operation last summer in the Milsap 
Bar area of the Feather River Canyon, Collins said, where 
growers--Mexican nationals--had "left trash all over the place." The 
officers caught one suspect who had a loaded shotgun. Another suspect got away.

Collins said he and his fellow officers frequently confiscate 
handguns, shotguns and rifles during raids in remote mountainous 
regions. He said hikers who venture onto public lands increasingly 
face the possibility of violence. "A lot of people just don't get to 
enjoy parts of the mountains that are really quite beautiful," he said.

Indoor grows pose a whole other set of problems: chemical waste 
dumped down drains; molds--including toxic molds--that get into 
drywall and all other parts of houses; fires from illegal use of 
electricity and faulty wiring; diesel spills from generators; and 
odors that can be offensive to nearby residents, especially people 
with allergies.

Tommy LaNier, initiative director for the San Diego-based California 
Marijuana Initiative, echoed every problem Collins cited, including 
the growing danger to hikers and other adventurers. "You have a 
number of armed individuals out there who are protecting a huge investment."

Mountain grows--in some cases in excess of 50,000 plants--can 
potentially be worth millions of dollars in street value. For the 
past four or five years, he said, California law enforcement agents 
have engaged in gun battles with suspects, but they've "won every one 
of those battles."

LaNier said it takes about $15,000 to restore one acre of land that 
growers have cultivated, and "one [environmentally devastated] acre 
will affect 10 acres." The United States Forest Service has some 
money available to rehab lands, but there isn't enough money for all 
the restoration needed.

Helen Harberts, a Butte County assistant district attorney, said the 
environmental damage caused by both outdoor grows in the mountains as 
well as residential outdoor and indoor grows is "getting to be a big 
problem." When she looks at the photographs of grow sites (that are 
used as evidence), she is "shocked" by the environmental 
contamination going on "in places that should be pristine."

The public would be very surprised if the extent of the problem were 
more widely known, she said.

Harberts said both residential outdoor grows and indoor grows create 
many problems in Butte County--and she personally takes offense at 
the intense odor of marijuana grown in her own Chico neighborhood. 
She said the "vagueness" of Proposition 215 (the Compassionate Use 
Act of 1996) has resulted in some people who are "greedy liars" 
taking advantage of the law, with a resultant proliferation of urban grows.

"I am somewhat intolerant of the way the law has gone here," said 
Harberts, who claimed that there is no solid scientific evidence that 
marijuana is "medicine." "California [voters] really didn't get it right."

One solution would be for voters to decide that only certified 
commercial growers could cultivate marijuana, which is what is done 
now in New Mexico. Right now, she said, the Prop 215 situation is 
"just one plain, big mess--a social mess, a legal mess."

Harberts said the debate over how the law is being implemented is 
emotion-driven when it should be fact-driven.

"It [Prop 215 and the proliferation of residential outdoor and indoor 
grows] is a big problem, and we need to address it in a thoughtful 
way," she said. "There are a lot of issues that need to be raised and 
examined." 
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake