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A28 u.s. news
Diasabra 18 september 2021

Illegal marijuana farms take West’s water in ‘blatant theft’

(AP) — Jack Dwyer pursued a nabis Research Center at the Univer- maximum THC content — the com- vegetables and to protect his home
dream of getting back to the land sity of California, Berkeley. pound that gives cannabis its high — against wildfires. He uses an old well
by moving in 1972 to an idyllic, must be no greater than 0.3%. Fibers for household water, but it’s unclear
tree-studded parcel in Oregon “Because peak water demand for can- of the hemp plant are used in making how long that will last.
with a creek running through it. nabis occurs in the dry season, when rope, clothing, paper and other prod-
streamflow is at its lowest levels, even ucts. “I just don’t know what I will do if I
“We were going to grow our own small diversions can dry streams and don’t have water,” the 75-year-old re-
food. We were going to live righ- harm aquatic plants and animals,” a Josephine County Sheriff Dave tired middle school teacher said.
teously. We were going to grow or- study from the center said. Daniel believes there are hundreds
ganic,” Dwyer said. Over the decades of illegal grows in his southern Or- Marijuana has been grown for de-
that followed, he and his family did Some jurisdictions are fighting back. egon county alone, many financed cades in southern Oregon, but the
just that. California’s Siskiyou County Board by overseas money. He believes the recent explosion of huge illegal grows
of Supervisors in May banned trucks financiers expect to lose a few grows has shocked residents.
But now, Deer Creek has run dry carrying 100 gallons or more of water but the sheer number of them means
after several illegal marijuana grows from using roads leading to arid tracts many will last until the marijuana is The Illinois Valley Soil and Water
cropped up in the neighborhood where some 2,000 illegal marijuana harvested and sold on the black mar- Conservation District, where Dwyer
last spring, stealing water from both grows were purportedly using mil- ket outside Oregon. lives, held two town halls about the
the stream and nearby aquifers and lions of gallons of water daily. issue recently. Water theft was the
throwing Dwyer’s future in doubt. None of the new sites has been li- main concern, said Christopher Hall,
The illegal grows are “depleting pre- censed to grow recreational mari- the conservation district’s commu-
From dusty towns to forests in the cious groundwater and surface water juana, Pettinger said. Regulators, nity organizer.
U.S. West, illegal marijuana grow- resources” and jeopardizing agricul- confronted in 2019 by a backlog of
ers are taking water in uncontrolled tural, recreational and residential wa- license applications and a glut of reg- “The people of the Illinois Valley are
amounts when there often isn’t ter use, the county ordinance says. ulated marijuana, stopped processing experiencing an existential threat for
enough to go around for even li- new applications until January 2022. the first time in local history,” Hall
censed users. Conflicts about water In Oregon, the number of illegal said.
have long existed, but illegal marijua- grows appears to have increased re- The illegal grows have had “cata-
na farms — which proliferate despite cently as the Pacific Northwest en- strophic” consequences for natural In the high desert of central Oregon,
legalization in many Western states dured its driest spring since 1924. water resources, Daniel said. Several illegal marijuana growers are also tap-
— are adding strain during a severe creeks have dried up far earlier than ping the water supply that’s already
drought. Many are operating under the guise normal and the water table — the un- so stressed that many farmers, in-
of being hemp farms, legalized na- derground boundary between water- cluding those who produce 60% of
In California, which legalized recre- tionally under the 2018 Farm Bill, saturated soil and unsaturated soil — the world’s carrot-seed supply, face a
ational marijuana in 2016, there are said Mark Pettinger, spokesman for is dropping. water shortage this year.
still more illegal cannabis farms than the Oregon Liquor and Cannabis
licensed ones, according to the Can- Commission. Under the law, hemp’s “It’s just blatant theft of water,” Dan- On Sept. 2, Deschutes County au-
iel said. thorities raided a 30-acre (12-hectare)
property in Alfalfa, just east of Bend.
Last month, Daniel and his deputies, It had 49 greenhouses containing al-
reinforced by other law enforcement most 10,000 marijuana plants and
officers, destroyed 72,000 marijuana featured a complex watering system
plants growing in 400 cheaply built with several 15,000- to 20,000-gallon
greenhouses, known as hoop houses. cisterns. Neighbors told detectives
the illegal grow has forced them to
The water for those plants came drill a new well, Sheriff Shane Nel-
through a makeshift, illicit system son said.
of pumps and hoses from the nearby
Illinois River, which belongs to the The Bend area has experienced a pop-
Wild and Scenic Rivers System, cre- ulation boom, putting more demands
ated by Congress to preserve certain on the water supply. The illegal grows
rivers with outstanding natural, cul- are making things worse.
tural, and recreational values.
In La Pine, south of Bend, Rodger
Daniel said another illegal grow that Jincks watched a crew drill a new well
had 200,000 plants was drawing water on his property. The first sign that his
from Deer Creek using pumps and existing well was failing came when
pipes. He called it “one of the most the pressure dropped as he watered
blatant and ugly things I’ve seen.” his tiny front lawn. Driller Shane
Harris estimated the water table is
“They had actually dug holes into the dropping 6 inches (15 centimeters)
ground so deep that Deer Creek had per year.
dried up ... and they were down into
the water table,” the sheriff said. Sheriff’s deputies last November
raided an illegal grow a block away
Dwyer has a water right to Deer that had 500 marijuana plants.
Creek, near the community of Sel-
ma, that allows him to grow crops. Jincks’ neighbor, Jim Hooper, wor-
The creek can run dry late in the ries that his well might fail next. He
year sometimes, but Dwyer has never resents the illegal grows and their un-
seen it this dry, much less this early in controlled used of water.
the year.
“With the illegals, there’s no track-
The streambed is now an avenue of ing of it,” Hooper said. “They’re just
rocks bordered by brush and trees. stealing the water from the rest of us,
which is causing us to spend thou-
Over the decades, Dwyer created an sands of dollars to drill new wells
infrastructure of buried water pipe, a deeper.”
dozen spigots and an irrigation sys-
tem connected to the creek to grow