Last week, a big multi-agency \u201creclamation\u201d effort on national forest lands in California\u2019s Emerald Triangle brought attention again to the serious environmental impacts of outlaw cannabis cultivation. But while environmental regulators condemn these illicit growers, they often overlook the obvious reality that legal crops also take an ecological toll. After years of breakneck well-drilling, much of California\u2019s best farmland is threatened by drought and seawater intrusion into groundwater aquifers. With many California counties approving large-scale cannabis farms, the environmental impacts of growing cannabis is also an issue for the legal industry in the years ahead.<\/p>\n
The U.S. Forest Service last week announced the completion of a \u201cmarijuana grow site reclamation operation\u201d in the Shasta-Trinity National Forest. Agents cleaned up a big mess apparently left behind by outlaw cannabis growers, including 30 miles of irrigation hose. Helicopters were called in to haul out several thousand pounds of fertilizer and equipment.<\/p>\n
A total of 12 grow sites were identified and \u201creclaimed\u201d in the operation, which included involvement of multiple government agencies and help from two local environmental non-profits.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese grow sites were in remote locations and were difficult to access, making remediation efforts challenging and costly,\u201d said USFS Patrol Captain Carson Harris in a\u00a0press release<\/a>. \u201cThe sites are far from roads, and because they contain toxic pesticides and other hazardous materials, HAZMAT protocols must be followed.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWe used helicopters to airlift tons of garbage and miles of irrigation piping,\u201d Harris added. \u201cThe team removed 950 pounds of fertilizer, 30 pounds of hazardous materials including pesticides, 24 propane tanks, 12 car batteries and 31.38 miles of irrigation hose. The total weight of infrastructure removed from the sites was 21,895 pounds.\u201d<\/p>\n Concerns about the\u00a0ecological impacts\u00a0of outlaw cultivation on Northern California\u2019s public lands have been mounting in recent years.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Last summer, a study commissioned by the Forest Service brought back the\u00a0grim findings<\/a>\u00a0that contamination from use of pesticides and petrochemical fertilizers had turned thousands of acres, particularly in the Emerald Triangle, into virtual toxic waste dumps. In some cases, contamination of the sites was so severe that law enforcement officers who touched plants covered in illegal pesticides ended up in the hospital.<\/p>\n Bringing cultivation out from the shadows and under\u00a0public oversight<\/a>\u00a0in order to mitigate such impacts was part of the impetus for Proposition 64, which legalized cannabis in the Golden State. On Jan. 1 of this year, the state\u2019s new adult-use market and temporary regulations went into effect. But there is an increasing fear that outlaw cultivation will continue, due to the\u00a0burdensome regulations<\/a>\u00a0in the legalized sector.\u00a0In which case, environmental impacts, as well as militarized enforcement, could continue on the north country\u2019s public lands.<\/p>\n Frequently forgotten in the debate around the environmental impacts of illegal cannabis growing is that\u00a0legal crops also take an ecological toll.<\/p>\n This is becoming a rather inescapable reality in the Salinas and Central valleys, where agri-business now has\u00a0ambitious plans<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0bring economies of scale\u00a0to the legal cannabis market. Recent sobering headlines cast a dubious light on the sustainability of farming practices on the very lands that have for generations been producing much of the nation\u2019s vegetables.<\/p>\n A May 14 report<\/a>\u00a0from the News Deeply website provides chilling details on the \u201cgroundwater emergency\u201d now facing the Salinas Valley. Seawater is now intruding into freshwater aquifers, a result of runaway well-drilling. Intensive groundwater pumping has drawn in seawater from Monterey Bay, some 30 miles away. The problem isn\u2019t new. Twenty years ago, Monterey County spent some $70 million to build the\u00a0Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project<\/a>, which injects recycled wastewater back into the ground to hold back the intrusive brine from the ocean. But this solution hasn\u2019t been able to keep pace with continued unregulated well-drilling.<\/p>\n Gary Petersen, general manager of the\u00a0Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency<\/a>\u00a0and coordinator of the working group, told News Deeply that water in the Salinas Valley was trapped in a \u201cvicious cycle.\u201d<\/p>\n The problem of water in California isn\u2019t limited just to Monterey and Salinas.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n In February, many farmers in California\u2019s agricultural Central Valley\u00a0were told by the federal government<\/a>\u00a0to expect 20 percent of the water they had requested for 2018.<\/p>\n A case can be made that cannabis conversion is part of the solution here, as it is less water-intensive than many crops now under cultivation \u2014 but not necessarily by much. Casey O\u2019Neill, a small cannabis farmer who serves as the board chair of the California Growers Association, wrote in\u00a0The Ganjier<\/a>\u00a0that it requires 4.5 gallons of water to produce a single joint, as compared to five gallons per head of broccoli.<\/p>\n Clearly, ecological sustainability is an issue the cannabis industry will have to grapple with as it is institutionalized and increasingly regulated. In the push to bring cannabis growers down from the hills of prohibition, it\u2019s worth recognizing and learning from the select cannabis growers who have been developing regenerative farming methods for cannabis for decades.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, do you know how your cannabis was grown?<\/p>\n The post The Environmental Toll of Growing Cannabis, Both Legally and Illegally<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Last week, a big multi-agency \u201creclamation\u201d effort on national forest lands in California\u2019s Emerald Triangle brought attention again to the serious environmental impacts of outlaw cannabis cultivation. But while environmental regulators condemn these illicit growers, they often overlook the obvious reality that legal crops also take an ecological toll. AfterContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4375,148,50,5,759,4376,4377,4378,4379,4380],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26413"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26413"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26413\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26414,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26413\/revisions\/26414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
The Ecological Impacts of Big Ag in California<\/h4>\n
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\nRead More: The Environmental Toll of Growing Cannabis, Both Legally and Illegally<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"