Pubdate: Sun, 23 Dec 2012
Source: Los Angeles Times (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Los Angeles Times
Contact:  http://www.latimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/248
Author: Joe Mozingo
Page: A1

The Green Rush

POT FARMS TAKE DIRTY TOLL

State's Medical Marijuana Boom Is Wreaking Havoc on Some Fragile Habitats.

EUREKA, Calif. - State scientists, grappling with an explosion of 
marijuana growing on the North Coast, recently studied aerial imagery 
of a small tributary of the Eel River, spawning grounds for 
endangered coho salmon and other threatened fish.

In the remote, 37-square-mile patch of forest, they counted 281 
outdoor pot farms and 286 greenhouses, containing an estimated 20,000 
plants - mostly fed by water diverted from creeks or a fork of the 
Eel. The scientists determined the farms were siphoning roughly 18 
million gallons from the watershed every year, largely at the time 
when the salmon most need it.

"That is just one small watershed," said Scott Bauer, the state 
scientist in charge of the coho recovery on the North Coast for the 
Department of Fish and Game. "You extrapolate that for all the other 
tributaries, just of the Eel, and you get a lot of marijuana sucking 
up a lot of water.... This threatens species we are spending millions 
of dollars to recover."

The marijuana boom that came with the sudden rise of medical cannabis 
in California has wreaked havoc on the fragile habitats of the North 
Coast and other parts of California. With little or no oversight, 
farmers have illegally mowed down timber, graded mountaintops flat 
for sprawling greenhouses, dispersed poisons and pesticides, drained 
streams and polluted watersheds.

Because marijuana is unregulated in California and illegal under 
federal law, most growers still operate in the shadows, and 
scientists have little hard data on their collective effect. But they 
are getting ever more ugly snapshots.

A study led by researchers at UC Davis found that a rare forest 
carnivore called a fisher was being poisoned in Humboldt County and 
near Yosemite in the Sierra Nevada.

The team concluded in its July report that the weasel-like animals 
were probably eating rodenticides that marijuana growers use to keep 
animals from gnawing on their plants or were preying on smaller 
rodents that had consumed the deadly bait. Forty-six of 58 fisher 
carcasses the team analyzed had rat poison in their systems.

Mark Higley, a wildlife biologist on the Hoopa Indian Reservation in 
eastern Humboldt who worked on the study, is incredulous over the 
poisons that growers are bringing in.

"Carbofuran," he said. "It seems like they're using that to kill 
bears and things like that that raid their camps. So they mix it up 
with tuna or sardine, and the bears eat that and die."

The insecticide is lethal to humans in small doses, requires a 
special permit from the EPA and is banned in other countries. 
Authorities are now regularly finding it at large-scale operations in 
some of California's most sensitive ecosystems.

It is just one in a litany of pollutants seeping into the watershed 
from pot farms: fertilizers, soil amendments, miticides, 
rodenticides, fungicides, plant hormones, diesel fuel, human waste.

Scientists suspect that nutrient runoff from excess potting soil and 
fertilizers, combined with lower-than-normal river flow because of 
diversions, has caused a rash of toxic blue-green algae blooms in 
North Coast rivers over the last decade.

The cyanobacteria outbreaks threaten public health for swimmers and 
kill aquatic invertebrates that salmon and steelhead trout eat. Now, 
officials warn residents in late summer and fall to stay out of 
certain stretches of water and to keep their dogs out. Eleven dogs 
have died from ingesting the floating algae since 2001.

The effects are disheartening to many locals because healthier salmon 
runs were signaling that the rivers were gradually improving from the 
damage caused by more than a century of logging.

"Now with these water diversions, we're potentially slamming the door 
on salmon recovery," said Scott Greacen, director of Friends of the Eel River.

In June, Bauer and other state scientists accompanied game wardens as 
they executed six search warrants on growers illegally sucking water 
from Trinity River tributaries. At one, he came upon a group of 20 
somethings with Michigan license plates on their vehicles, camping 
next to 400 plants. He followed an irrigation line up to a creek, 
where the growers had dug a pond and lined it with plastic.

"I started talking to this guy, and he says he used to be an Earth 
First! tree-sitter, saving the trees," Bauer said. "I told him 
everything he was doing here negates everything he did as an environmentalist."

The man was a small-timer in this new gold rush. As marijuana floods 
the market and prices drop, many farmers are cultivating ever bigger 
crops to make a profit. They now cut huge clearings for 
industrial-scale greenhouses. With no permits or provisions for 
runoff, the operations dump tons of silt into the streams during the 
rainy season.

Scanning Google Earth in his office recently, Bauer came upon a "mega 
grow" that did not exist the year before - a 4-acre bald spot in the 
forest with 42 greenhouses, each 100 feet long.

Figuring a single greenhouse that size would hold 80 plants, each 
using about 5 gallons of water a day, he estimated the operation 
would consume 2 million gallons of water in the dry season and 
unleash a torrent of sediment in the wet season.

"There has been an explosion of this in the last two years," Bauer 
said. "We can't keep up with it."

Every grow has its own unique footprint. Some farmers on private land 
avoid pesticides and poisons, get their water legally, keep their 
crops small and try to minimize runoff. Urban indoor growers might 
not pollute a river, but they guzzle energy. A study in the journal 
Energy Policy calculated that indoor marijuana cultivation could be 
responsible for 9% of California's household electricity use. Other 
producers, like the Mexican drug trafficking groups who set up giant 
growing operations on public lands next to mountain streams, spread 
toxins far and wide and steal enough water to run oscillating 
sprinkler systems.

But it's not just the big criminal groups skirting the rules. Tony 
LaBanca, senior environmental scientist at Fish and Game in Eureka, 
said less than 1% of marijuana growers get the permits required to 
take water from a creek, and those who do usually do so after an 
enforcement action.

Responsible growers could easily get permits, with no questions asked 
about what type of plant they're watering, LaBanca said. They just 
need to be set up to take their water in the wet season and store it 
in tanks and bladders.

Fish and Game wants to step up enforcement, he said, but the staff is 
overwhelmed. The agency has 12 scientists and 15 game wardens for the 
entire four counties on the North Coast, covering thousands of 
mountainous square miles.

Until the last few years, dealing with marijuana cultivation was 
usually a minor issue. Now, LaBanca said, it is "triage."

On a recent day, Higley, the Hoopa wildlife biologist, took a 
reporter and photographer to some of the damage he finds in the most 
remote mountains, where bears, fishers, martens, rare salamanders and 
spotted owls live in cloud-mist forests. With his colleague Aaron 
Pole at the wheel, Higley headed north up the Bigfoot Highway and 
then up a dirt logging road 13 miles into the snow-peaked Trinities.

They were going to a grow that the sheriff had raided by helicopter 
in August. Deputies cut down 26,600 plants in eight interconnected 
clearings along Mill Creek, which flows into the Trinity River.

They parked the truck and started threading down precipitous slopes, 
through thick wet brush and forest. They stepped over bear scat, 
slippery roots and coastal giant salamanders.

Crossing a 2-foot-wide creek, they came across a black irrigation 
line. Vague footpaths emerged, empty Coors cans began glinting in the 
mud, more water pipes spidered out.

After another 40 minutes, they reached a clearing in the bottom of 
the canyon - a field of stumps, holes of dark potting soil and 
hacked-down stalks of marijuana. Dead gray brush and logs ringed the 
site. A few heavily pruned trees were left standing, to help mask the 
marijuana grove from the air.

Deputies had severed the irrigation lines during the August raid, but 
when Higley returned in September to study the environmental impact, 
some of the line had been reconnected to sprinklers, and plants had 
re-sprouted. He saw a wet bar of soap on an upturned bucket and 
realized workers were hiding nearby.

On this return visit, the site was empty, and Higley started picking 
through the rubbish. "That's d-CON rat poison right there, 16 trays."

At a dump pile next to the creek, he found propane tanks, more rat 
poison, cans of El Pato tomato sauce, and empty bags of Grow More 
fertilizer, instant noodles and tortillas.

A lot of the trash had been removed during the August eradication - 
dozens of empty bags accounting for 2,700 pounds of fertilizer and 
boxes for 10 pounds of d-CON (enough to kill 21 spotted owls and up 
to 28 fishers), as well as the carcasses of two poached deer and the 
remains of a state-protected ringtailed cat.

"It wouldn't matter if they were growing tomatoes, corn and squash," 
Higley said. "It's trespassing, it's illegal and it borders on 
terrorism to the environment."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom