NORTH COAST, Calif. – State Sen. Mike McGuire, working with Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de Leon, has helped secure critical funding from state water and drought relief bonds to fight devastating illegal water diversions from trespass marijuana grows in Northern California.
These illegal grows, compounded with historic drought conditions, have had a significant negative impact on Northern California watersheds and forests.
Last year was the first since written records have been kept that both the Eel and the Mattole Rivers ran dry, due to the historic state drought and a multitude of illegal diversions.
The bond dollars, which were approved on the Senate Floor late Wednesday afternoon, will be immediately put to work through the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, or CDFW.
CDFW will utilize the $2 million McGuire helped secure to hire an additional 11 positions that will be focused on ending the thousands of illegal cultivation related diversions in Northern California watersheds.
These 11 positions will join a marijuana task force which was created last year by Gov. Jerry Brown’s office.
“The ongoing drought has been devastating to our rural areas and I applaud Gov. Brown, President Pro Tem de Leon and Speaker Atkins for advancing these desperately needed investments,” McGuire said. “Northern California has been particularly hard hit due to the state’s historic drought and the thousands of illegal marijuana grows that have taken hold in our forests.”
The overall $1 billion package will expedite bond funding to make the state more resilient to the disastrous effects of climate change and help ensure that all Californians have access to local water supplies.
“North Coast watersheds are under attack and the drought is exacerbating these impacts on drinking water supplies, our environment and they represent a severe threat to endangered species. This money is a good step in the right direction, but there is a long road ahead and I’ll continue to fight to make sure Northern California has the resources it needs to combat this historic drought,” McGuire said.
There also will be expanded funding for the protection of streams and rivers for instream flows, fish and habitat as well as water efficiency programs to benefit local customers.
“There’s more to come as we work together at the state and local levels to fight for the funds our rural counties and small cities need to create and update the water infrastructure projects,” McGuire said.
In related news, McGuire's report about the funds came on the same day as CDFW announced the publication of new, groundbreaking work on marijuana's effect on the environment conducted by the agency's scientists.
The first-of-its-kind study clearly shows that water used for growing marijuana has a devastating effect on fish in the state.
The study showed that during drought conditions, water demand for marijuana cultivation exceeded streamflow in three of four study watersheds.
The resulting paper, entitled “Impacts of Surface Water Diversions for Marijuana Cultivation on Aquatic Habitat in Four Northwestern California Watersheds,” concludes that diminished stream flow from this water-intensive activity is likely to have lethal to sub-lethal effects on state and federally listed salmon and steelhead trout and will cause further decline of sensitive amphibian species.
The study was published online in the scientific journal PLOS One, http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0120016 .
By using online tools to count marijuana plants and measure greenhouses, and conducting inspections of marijuana cultivation sites with state wildlife officers and local law enforcement, CDFW scientists quantified plant numbers and water use.
Utilizing stream flow data provided by staff at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, CDFW determined water demand for cultivation could use more than 100 percent of stream flow during the summer dry season in three of four study watersheds.
Stream flow monitoring conducted by CDFW in the summer of 2014 appeared to verify these results.
“All the streams we monitored in watersheds with large scale marijuana cultivation went dry,” said CDFW Senior Environmental Scientist Scott Bauer, lead author of the research paper. “The only stream we monitored that didn’t go dry contained no observed marijuana cultivation.”
CDFW’s Law Enforcement Division works closely with dozens of other state and federal agencies to eradicate illegal marijuana grows on public, tribal and private lands as well as protect the state’s natural resources.
“This research paper demonstrates the importance of greater regulatory efforts by state agencies to prevent the extinction of imperiled fisheries resources,” said CDFW Assistant Chief Brian Naslund. “CDFW’s new Watershed Enforcement Team (WET) was created with just that in mind.”
The WET program works with agency partners to protect public trust resources from the negative effects of marijuana cultivation, which include both excessive water use and pollution.
CDFW will continue to monitor the effects of water diversion for marijuana cultivation on stream flow through the summer of 2015.
Marijuana cultivation is legal in California if growers have the proper CDFW lake and streambed alteration permits. Responsible growers help conserve the state’s natural resources and are less likely to be subject to enforcement action.