USA TODAY International Edition
CALIFORNIA’S ILLEGAL MARIJUANA FARMS FORCE COPS TO WIELD ‘ GREEN’ STICK
Armed with eco codes, police target growers who pollute streams and bulldoze forests
Sgt. Kerry Ireland leans out the open door of the circling helicopter, pointing down at the emerald- green plants growing in neat rows beneath a canopy of trees.
“There you go, there’s one,” he yells over the thumping blades and whistling wind as the pilot holds the ship in a tight turn.
Deep in Northern California’s national forest and miles from the nearest paved road, someone has illegally planted hundreds of marijuana plants. In the helicopter’s rear seat, Deputy Kyle Holt checks the GPS tracker in his lap to make sure the coordinates match the location, and they fly off in search of the next illegal grow. And the next.
They fly all day, but there are so many farms they could do this all summer — finding spots of land cleared for cannabis cultivation that pockmark thousands of acres of forested mountains.
Though these helicopter flights are an annual exercise for Ireland and his team, they’re bringing along something new this year: a recently enacted county law requiring cannabis growers to meet tough regulations of the kind normally followed by traditional farmers and business owners.
Long before it enters the consumer market, pot grown by illegal operations — often on public land — leaves deep marks on California’s stressed landscape.
Redwood and pine groves are scraped bare by bulldozers, and ponds turn green after overfertilized water feeds algae blooms. The large, hidden farms tap low rivers, dirty the drinking water and pollute important fisheries.
In a sparsely populated county nearly the size of Connecticut, many marijuana growers decide the risk of getting caught is worth the profits.
The damage has grown more severe over the past several decades as commercial- scale operations elbow out smaller, family- run operations.
As a result, law enforcement is trying a different tack to fight illegal pot grown in Humboldt Coun- ty, the source of most of the cannabis flowing through California’s massive marijuana industry. Rather than just using criminal laws, town and county police officers have started to wield environmental laws to curb this activity.
“The problem we have to address are the people who have no care for the environment and, I would argue, no care for their community,” says Estelle Fennell, a member of the county’s elected Board of Supervisors. “They’re just in it for a buck.” COPS AND CODE INSPECTORS California has the country’s largest medical marijuana marketplace, where billions of virtually tax- free dollars flow from growers to distributors to co- ops that operate on a “donation” system. Drivers deliver high- quality pot to customers’ homes or offices, within minutes.
The system gives growers and users a level of legal protection from criminal laws that would otherwise make possession of large amounts of pot a felony. As in other states, including Colorado, many growers use the cover of the medical marijuana system to grow cannabis they illegally ship across state lines.
Some of the Humboldt County industry is legal, at least under state law. Much is illegal. And all of it violates federal law.
Frustrated by their inability to make a significant dent in the flow of illegal pot, police and regulators in Northern California increasingly turn to environmental and zoning laws.
The fact is, few marijuana growers bother to comply with basic rules governing electrical wiring, construction permits or water supplies.
The violations are glaring. Pot growers steal water, illegally cut down and clear forested areas, build unpermitted greenhouses and dump massive amounts of fertilizer on their crops, police say. Growers find themselves targeted by cops accompanied by code inspectors.
Though criminal cases can take months or years to wend their way through the court system, civil violations are far easier to prove.
“Taking that route what’s really going to hurt them,” Ireland says. is SINGLE BUST: $ 26M Looking around Humboldt County, it’s easy to see how marijuana money drives this economy, from the high number of fertilizer dealers to the stores selling equipment to trim the plants. About 25% of the entire county economy is marijuana- related.
“You can’t swing a dead cat in Humboldt County without hitting a major marijuana operation. It’s everywhere in Humboldt County,” Ireland says. “Everywhere.”
Marijuana occupies a gray area in Humboldt, which has just 37 residents per square mile.
State law allows people to grow cannabis for medical use or on behalf of others. There’s no real statewide central registry of who is allowed to use or grow medical marijuana, which means police trying to keep things legal have to wade through stacks of authorization forms, which may be photocopies shared by multiple growers.
Potential profits are staggering: In Humboldt County, a pound of processed marijuana sells for about $ 1,500.
Sold illegally in another state, that same pot could be worth two or three times as much. Even the worst grower can get a half- pound from a plant, while an expert can easily coax upward of 3 pounds.
This year, the Humboldt Country Drug Task Force arrested one man found with more than 2,000 marijuana plants. That’s a haul worth at least $ 1.5 million. Last year, deputies made a single bust worth $ 26 million, seizing 23,000 plants, more than 2 tons of processed pot and 50,000 rounds of ammunition. “Marijuana is the cash crop of Humboldt County. It’s what people do there,” says Emily Brady, author of the book Humboldt: Life on America’s Marijuana Frontier. Hippies founded the local marijuana industry, many moving out of San Francisco during the 1960s back- tothe- land movement. Today, those aging hippies and their descendants compete with large- scale growers who illegally bulldoze forest areas to make farms hidden from view — or at least hidden from the ground. From the air, it’s clear that Ireland and his team have their hands full.
“You can’t swing a dead cat in Humboldt County without hitting a major marijuana operation. It’s everywhere.” Police Sgt. Kerry Ireland
‘ LONG VIEW’ Since the county rules took effect in January, requiring growers to register industrial- scale cannabis operations and to comply with basic environmental regulations, about 40 growers have completed the registration process. That’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s a start.
“This has been an issue that’s developed over four decades. It started out as a little here and a little there, but it became very businesslike. People are making a lot of money, so over time, specifically in the past 10 years, there’s been something akin to a green rush,” Humboldt County’s Fennell says.
She says the new county rules are intended to take a “long view” of the problem and will probably take years to have a significant impact.
Observing from the sky, Ireland says, “Those guys are making millions of dollars each year. They’re going to fight for what they have.”