California’s worsening drought and booming marijuana industry are on a collision course. As the water levels drop and tensions rise, many are asking questions like: Who is to blame? Who should be rationed? And is there a solution? JPR’s Michael Joyce takes a look at just one angle of this crisis: cannabis and cows.
There's a bumper sticker going around that reads: WE ALL LIVE DOWNSTREAM. But in Humboldt County that’s not quite true.
Most outdoor marijuana farms are upstream, and most cattle ranches and dairies are downstream. The implications of this imbalance - especially during a drought - are huge.
Jeff Stackhouse: "The way the system is set up is it’s easiest to regulate the already regulated."
Jeff Stackhouse is a livestock and natural resources advisor for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Humboldt and Del Norte counties.
Jeff Stackhouse: "The problem with that system is that the people who are taking water illegally are not on paper. And they should be the first to have the water shut off. Those who have previously reported use … their information, their address, their phone number, their names are in the system. You really have folks that are trying to make an honest living that are getting the short end of the stick because they did it right from the beginning."
Gary Belli: "There’s nothing fair about it as far as I’m concerned."
Gary Belli manages a herd of 130 heifers just a couple miles shy of the ocean. If he sounds frustrated it’s because he is. He’s always paid his water permits. He estimates his source creek is running just 50-percent of normal, and it’s only mid-July.
Each of his cows still drinks about 20 to 30 gallons of water a day, and he needs to irrigate his pastures for feed to the tune of about 10,000 gallons a day. Cows are one of the most water-intensive commodities in agriculture.
Gary Belli: "If fish and game or water quality would leave me alone, I could use this water and do one small field at a time and maintain. But if they cut me off entirely I can’t do anything."
And Belli did get cut off. A week after I spoke with him. He’s a more recent, or so-called Junior Water Rights holder. The Senior Water Rights holders have priority. So when he looks upstream and sees new pot grows taking water illegally he doesn’t mince words.
Gary Belli: "Enforce the law! It’s against the law and get rid of them.There’s too much money involved."
Blaming illegal marijuana grows for water and other environmental problems seems popular these days. Brad Job is a Humboldt-based civil engineer who used to evaluate grows for the Bureau of Land Management. He says it’s important to put them in a historical context.
Brad Job: "There is definitely a significant water quality impact from marijuana cultivation. But it wouldn’t be so magnified if it hadn’t been preceded by 150 years of marginally bad land management practices: overgrazing, clear-cut logging, fire suppression, climate change. All these things reduce the abundance of water in the watershed. And the marijuana diversion on top of that magnifies the impact of the marijuana cultivation sites."
Brad Job’s colleague Colin Hughes agrees and says water quality is just as pressing an issue as water quantity. He wonders how - in a black market - you can regulate the unregulated.
Colin Hughes: "Well, the State Water Resources Control Board has admitted that 90 percent of the known diversions are currently not in compliance. So you can imagine how many unknown diversions there are out here in the hills."
The facts about the scale and sustainability of area pot grows remain difficult to pinpoint. Several pot growers approached to contribute to this story refused. Of those people who would speak on the record most agreed that all water users need to be accountable for their impact on the ecosystem.
