Char Miller - Where There’s Smoke: The Environmental Science, Public Policy, and Politics of Marijuana

The Environmental Science,
Public Policy, and
Politics of Marijuana

Edited by Char Miller

Foreword by Jared Huffman

University Press of Kansas

2018 by the University Press of Kansas

All rights reserved

Published by the University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, Kansas 66045), which was organized by the Kansas Board of Regents and is operated and funded by Emporia State University, Fort Hays State University, Kansas State University, Pittsburg State University, the University of Kansas, and Wichita State University.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Miller, Char, 1951editor.

Title: Where theres smoke : the environmental science, public policy, and politics of marijuana / edited by Char Miller; foreword by Jared Huffman.

Description: Lawrence, Kansas : University Press of Kansas, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017052561

ISBN 9780700625222 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 9780700625239 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: CannabisUnited States. | MarijuanaGovernment policyUnited States. | AgricultureEnvironmental aspectsUnited States. | Public landsEnvironmental aspectsUnited States.

Classification: LCC HV5822.C3 W494 2018 | DDC 362.29/50973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017052561.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed in the United States of America

10987654321

The paper used in this publication is recycled and contains 30 percent postconsumer waste. It is acid free and meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1992.

Anthony Silvaggio

Greta M. Wengert, Mourad W. Gabriel, J. Mark Higley, and Craig Thompson

Craig Thompson, Mourad W. Gabriel, Greta M. Wengert, and J. Mark Higley

J. Mark Higley, Greta M. Wengert, Dawn M. Blake, and Mourad W. Gabriel

Jeff Rose, Matthew T. J. Brownlee, and Kelly S. Bricker

John Nores Jr.

Amos Irwin

Hawes Spencer and Char Miller

Courtenay W. Daum

Anthony Johnson

Karen D. August and Char Miller

Amanda Reiman

Char Miller and Anthony Silvaggio

Jared Huffman

Not every member of Congress gets to wear a screamer suit when conducting site visits in their home districtsthough maybe more should. My chance to get buckled into the strangely comfortable, sling-like harness came in August 2014 at the end of a long day witnessing the aftermath of a bust of a significant trespass marijuana growing operation. I was on French Creek in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, in the Trinity Alps wildernessone of the most remote corners of the district I represent in Congress, and more than 200 miles north of the San Francisco Bay Area. The day had started out with another unusual experience for a then first-term member of Congress: an early morning departure from Moffett Field aboard a Blackhawk helicopter that carried me those many miles north to a landing zone near the trespass grow, followed by a 2-mile bushwhacking hike down rugged, steep terrain.

I arrived a couple hours after the initial raid, as evidence was being gathered and an environmental assessment was getting underway. But even without a formal assessment you could see the damage that this relatively small trespass grow of a few thousand plants had inflicted. To feed an elaborate irrigation system, two springs had been tapped and completely diverteddewatering small creeks that lead into protected rivers. Many trees had been leveled to open up the canopy so that the rows of marijuana plants could thrive in the warm California sun; fertilizer and rodenticide was spread all over the place. The camp was essentially a garbage dump that looked like well over a dozen people had lived there, though only three were seen running away when law enforcement arrived.

This operation was one of many that summer, each the result of a broad collaboration between interested parties, from the California National Guard, to law enforcement and fish and wildlife agencies at all levels, to scientists from UC Davis. In my district, these efforts have also operated in conjunction with the tribal officials and agencies who call the region home: in the case of the raid I witnessed it was the Hoopa Valley Tribe who participated. The next year, Operation Yurok targeted multiple trespass marijuana sites in and around the Yurok Reservation.

Figure F.1. From left: Mark Higley, Lieutenant (Retired) R. P. Gaske, Warden Tim Bola, Congressman Jared Huffman, Dr. Mourad Gabriel, and Dr. Greta Wengert. Courtesy of the Integral Ecology Research Center

Yet each of these successful operations still only addresses a small fraction of the larger problem. Although shutting down trespass grow sites in these coordinated raids can stop the harm, there arent dedicated funds to fully clean up and remediate the affected areas, meaning that wilderness, wildlife, and everything downstream continue to feel the effects. Just how devastating these sites can be is captured in the following data about what federal, state, and local authorities hauled out of only seven sites in Trinity and Humboldt Counties in one season:

8,188 pounds of fertilizer

104 pounds of rodenticide

560 gallons of insecticide

68 ounces of concentrated Carbofuran (reconstituting 6070 gallons)

205 bags (50 gallons) of garbage

8.5 miles of irrigation line

The diversion and irrigation infrastructure installed at these sites is sophisticated, and they would be impressive engineering achievements if they werent drawing down scarce water and jeopardizing fish and wildlife, including the salmon and steelhead that have been painstakingly restored to these watersheds. In those seven sites alone, 67.5 million gallons of water were diverted per grow season. That comes to a little more than 200 acre-feetthe unit of measurement that professional water managers use to calculate the amount of water needed to cover an acre of ground to a depth of a footacross just a few sites, making this very literally a drop in the bucket in the overall picture of illegal grow operations in California.

Although there is a range of estimates of how many plants are grown and harvested in trespass sites like these across the state, it is clear that law enforcement has only discovered a small fraction of these illegal grows that make public and private forests unsafe for working and recreation. Combined, these operations have resulted in threats to public safety, major illegal water diversions, the rampant use of toxic chemicals, the cutting down of trees, the poisoning of endangered wildlife, and the drying-up of streams and the fisheries they support, an accounting that is detailed throughout Where Theres Smoke.

This books focus on the complex environmentaland politicalimpact of illegal and trespass marijuana operations is reflected as well in my deep concern for this issue. I represent Californias second congressional district, which runs from the Golden Gate Bridge, just north of San Francisco, up the entire length of the states magnificent north coast. That means I represent the so-called Emerald Triangle of Mendocino, Humboldt, and Trinity Counties. This is a predominantly rural, heavily forested region that covers about 10,000 square miles in the northwest corner of the state. The Emerald Triangle since the 1960s has been at the center of our nations marijuana culture and the cannabis economy and is today the national epicenter of illegal marijuana trespass grows.