Article published February 12, 2015 by Willits News By: Adrian Baumann Read online at Willits News A coalition of state and local government agencies, led by the State Water Board and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife inspected 15 marijuana farms in January along Sproul Creek in Humboldt County. The inspection tour was authorized … Read more
By: Will Parrish October 15, 2014 In roughly three weeks, the relatively slim percentage of Californians who vote in the Nov. 2014 election will decide on a politically contentious (is there any other kind of water politics in California?) $7.5 billion state general obligation bond, Proposition 1, entitled “THE State Water Bond” (emphasis added). A … Read more
With the Green Rush and the drought colliding this summer, is it too late to save Humboldt’s watersheds? Growers used an illegally dug spring to irrigate their crops at the scene of this marijuana growing operation uncovered by the Humboldt County Sheriff’s office last summer. It’s July 2 and about 18 officials are sitting in … Read more
Enviro groups push Forest Service to release pot maps …There could be several plausible reasons the Forest Service didn’t produce the rumored maps: They aren’t official, they’re part of ongoing law enforcement investigations or they don’t exist. Or it could be that the maps — like the one Henson says he caught a brief glimpse … Read more
By: Scott Greacen April 18, 2014 New Rules for Drying Times? Serial Variance Requests Reveal Vulnerability of Eel River Fisheries to Demands from Russian River Irrigators The Eel River’s surviving salmonids—chinook, coho, and steelhead—are struggling to come back from near-extinction. Good returns from 2010 to 13, particularly for chinook, felt like recovery might be getting … Read more
…with logging activity on the decline across much of the region and a thriving black market for pot — plus state-sanctioned recreational marijuana sales in Washington and Colorado — the spread of cannabis cultivation is now seen by many environmentalists and government scientists as the greatest threat to forests and streams damaged by decades of … Read more
On March 13, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) and the State Water Resources Control Board (State Water Board) announced expedited approval for the installation of storage tanks by landowners who currently divert water from coastal rivers in CDFW regions 1 & 3. Humboldt County and most of the Eel River watershed are … Read more
Thanks to the drug’s illegal status, marijuana farms are not regulated – with serious costs to water and wildlife. A tax on excessive electricity use may seem like an indirect way of curbing household cannabis cultivation, but the city had to back away from its more direct approach—a zoning ordinance—when the federal government threatened to … Read more
…what often occurs is that as one pool is drained, the intake and sometimes the pump is moved to another pool—repeatedly sucking away entire fish habitats. As the water disappears, predators move in. Egrets, blue herons and raccoons will eat every single fish. Sometimes the person pumping doesn’t adequately screen the intake valve and small creatures … Read more
…The environmental damage may not be as extensive as that caused by the 19th-century diking of the Humboldt estuary here, or 20th-century clear-cut logging, but the romantic outlaw drug has become a destructive juggernaut, experts agree. Read the full article published in the New York Times By: Felicity Barringer Published: Thursday, June 20 2013