Growing Pains

POT CULTIVATION CAUSES ENVIRONMENTAL AND PUBLIC-SAFETY CONCERNS

Outdoor adventurers trekking through unfamiliar territories may want
to consider equipment other than backpacks and walking sticks. Hazmat
suits and bulletproof vests may be in order.

That's because large-scale marijuana-growing operations in the most
remote reaches of California's national forests increasingly
compromise both the environment and public safety.

Steve Collins, sergeant with the Marijuana Unit of the Butte County
Sheriff's Office, said growers often divert streams and sometimes dam
them and add chemicals to the water supply, affecting everything
downstream--including wildlife, humans and plants. Growers bathe and
wash clothes in the streams. Sometimes the water diversions dry up
entire drainages within a watershed.

Additionally, Collins said, growers frequently clear--sometimes
clear-cut--mountainous areas for grow sites (which can include
terracing). These areas are then prone to significant erosion.

Law enforcement officials say the illegal growers--often Mexican
nationals working for drug-trafficking organizations--inflict much
environmental damage to forests, water and wildlife. Common problems
include illegal use of pesticides, herbicides and chemical fertilizers.

Growers use rodenticides to kill small crop-eating animals, but the
poison is ingested by other mammals and birds, leaving poisoned
carcasses that continue to poison the food chain. The same growers,
who camp at the sites, illegally shoot and eat wildlife, including
deer, bears and birds. Trash--pesticide containers, chemical
fertilizer bags, camp waste--abounds at the sites and may empty into streams.

The Marijuana Unit raided a grow operation last summer in the Milsap
Bar area of the Feather River Canyon, Collins said, where
growers--Mexican nationals--had "left trash all over the place." The
officers caught one suspect who had a loaded shotgun. Another suspect got away.

Collins said he and his fellow officers frequently confiscate
handguns, shotguns and rifles during raids in remote mountainous
regions. He said hikers who venture onto public lands increasingly
face the possibility of violence. "A lot of people just don't get to
enjoy parts of the mountains that are really quite beautiful," he said.

Indoor grows pose a whole other set of problems: chemical waste
dumped down drains; molds--including toxic molds--that get into
drywall and all other parts of houses; fires from illegal use of
electricity and faulty wiring; diesel spills from generators; and
odors that can be offensive to nearby residents, especially people
with allergies.

Tommy LaNier, initiative director for the San Diego-based California
Marijuana Initiative, echoed every problem Collins cited, including
the growing danger to hikers and other adventurers. "You have a
number of armed individuals out there who are protecting a huge investment."

Mountain grows--in some cases in excess of 50,000 plants--can
potentially be worth millions of dollars in street value. For the
past four or five years, he said, California law enforcement agents
have engaged in gun battles with suspects, but they've "won every one
of those battles."

LaNier said it takes about $15,000 to restore one acre of land that
growers have cultivated, and "one [environmentally devastated] acre
will affect 10 acres." The United States Forest Service has some
money available to rehab lands, but there isn't enough money for all
the restoration needed.

Helen Harberts, a Butte County assistant district attorney, said the
environmental damage caused by both outdoor grows in the mountains as
well as residential outdoor and indoor grows is "getting to be a big
problem." When she looks at the photographs of grow sites (that are
used as evidence), she is "shocked" by the environmental
contamination going on "in places that should be pristine."

The public would be very surprised if the extent of the problem were
more widely known, she said.

Harberts said both residential outdoor grows and indoor grows create
many problems in Butte County--and she personally takes offense at
the intense odor of marijuana grown in her own Chico neighborhood.
She said the "vagueness" of Proposition 215 (the Compassionate Use
Act of 1996) has resulted in some people who are "greedy liars"
taking advantage of the law, with a resultant proliferation of urban grows.

"I am somewhat intolerant of the way the law has gone here," said
Harberts, who claimed that there is no solid scientific evidence that
marijuana is "medicine." "California [voters] really didn't get it right."

One solution would be for voters to decide that only certified
commercial growers could cultivate marijuana, which is what is done
now in New Mexico. Right now, she said, the Prop 215 situation is
"just one plain, big mess--a social mess, a legal mess."

Harberts said the debate over how the law is being implemented is
emotion-driven when it should be fact-driven.

"It [Prop 215 and the proliferation of residential outdoor and indoor
grows] is a big problem, and we need to address it in a thoughtful
way," she said. "There are a lot of issues that need to be raised and
examined."