Pot influx before legal sales plagues California towns
Authorities cut down illegal plants in raids
COPPEROPOLIS, Calif. — The four young men had just started their marijuana harvest in rural Northern California when a dozen sheriff ’s deputies swooped in with guns drawn, arrested them and spent the day chopping down 150 bushy plants with machetes.
“I could do this every day if I had the personnel,” Calaveras County Sheriff Rick Dibasilio said during the operation near the Sierra Nevada foothills town of Copperopolis, about two hours east of San Francisco.
Authorities this year have cut down close to 30,000 plants grown without permits in a county that is reconsidering its embrace of marijuana cultivation ahead of statewide legalization.
Marijuana has deeply divided financially strapped Calaveras County, among many where growers are increasingly open about their operations and are starting to encroach on neighborhoods.
Dibasilio estimates the county, population 44,000 and about the size of Rhode Island, has more than 1,000 illegal farms in addition to the hundreds with permits or in the process of obtaining them. The influx has caused a backlash among residents and led to the ouster of some leaders who approved marijuana cultivation.
Pot farmers operating legally, meanwhile, say they are helping the local economy and have threatened to sue over attempts to stop them.
California is set to issue licenses in January to grow, transport and sell weed for recreational purposes, nearly 20 years after the state first authorized the drug’s consumption with a doctor’s recommendation.
Farmers legally can grow marijuana for recreational consumption next year but are required to get a local permit before applying for a state license, which has sparked a boom in pot-friendly counties. Calaveras County officials expected to receive about 250 applications by the 2016 deadline. They got 770. About 200 applications have been approved, a similar number rejected, and the others are still being processed.
The new pot farms have brought a bustling industry that includes the sounds of generators, bright lights illuminating gardens at night, water trucks kicking up dust on their way to grows, the distinct odor of marijuana and temporary housing for migrant workers.
Law enforcement officials say they have raided farms where they have found pesticides that are banned in the U.S.
“It has changed our way of life,” said Bill Mcmanus, head of an organization seeking to ban marijuana in Calaveras County. “The environmental impacts are atrocious.”
The California Growers Association estimates about 3,500 farmers in Humboldt, Mendocino and Trinity counties have applied for local permits and will be in a position to receive state licenses. An additional 29,000 farmers there haven’t bothered with the paperwork, according to the group.