Ecologist Mourad Gabriel told Reuters earlier this month that the illegal marijuana farms in California are producing significant amounts of pollution. Five police officers have reportedly been sent to the hospital after simply touching pot plants grown on federal land in the forests of California, according to the Reuters report. The officers and two growers developed breathing issues and rashes not long after making contact with the plants. Needless to say, as state Assemblyman Jim Wood said, “These places aren’t safe to go into.”
The Scope
Literally tons of pollutants (including banned agro-chemicals such as zinc phosphide and carbofuran) have been discovered at the marijuana grow sites, which make up 90 percent of the country’s illegal pot farms. Nearly 200,000 ounces of toxic pesticides were found along with 731,000 pounds of solid fertilizer and 491,000 ounces of liquid fertilizer. These numbers indicate that the problem is much more severe than officials once thought. In 2013, the US Forest Service reported that marijuana-related pollution was negatively impacting California forests, but their picture of the issue was nowhere near as bad as the one painted by Gabriel. According to Gabriel, certain grow sites are so poisoned that one would only need a tiny amount of chemicals to kill a bear.
Marijuana pollution has been an issue for some time and yet state officials still haven’t done their part. The state had indicated that certain sites were looked after and cleaned. But those same sites were combed by Gabriel and his crew, who found that nearly half of the allegedly contained chemicals were still present.
Federal Crime
The massive quantities of pollution constitute a federal crime. This type of crime has been prosecuted by the US government before – in Alaska, Washington and Oregon. Once clean-up is enforced, the price is steep. At an average of $100,000 per toxic waste site, California residents could end up footing a bill that exceeds $100 million. There are 639 pot farms on the docket for cleanup and each of those farms takes up 50 acres.
Mourad Gabriel
In 2012, Gabriel, executive director of the Integral Ecology Research Center, became entangled in this issue when he published a paper showing immense quantities of rat poison in the forested public lands of California. Marijuana farms were the only possible source of rat poison in the region. Rats were turning up dead with anticoagulant rodenticide (AR) in their system. This was significant because animals known as fishers eat rats and thus were exposed to the risk of death by rat poison. And fishers, as it turned out, were on the verge of endangerment. Gabriel discovered that 10 percent of dead fishers had been killed by AR and toxicology reports discovered some fishers to have six poisons in their blood stream.
Fishers and rats aren’t the only victims of pollution. A variety of other animals have been subject to risk of exposure to deadly chemicals. Spotted and barred owls, which are endangered, have been found dead with rodenticide in their system.
Following the release of his paper, Gabriel received a lot of heat from people accusing him of assisting the federal government in “greenwashing the war on drugs.” And after receiving death threats, Gabriel’s dog died due to ingestion of meat mixed with De-Con rat bait.
Regulation
As marijuana slowly works its way into the legal system, it also stands to be regulated by the appropriate regulatory bodies. In California, the State Water Resources Control Board has commenced a public dialogue regarding laws that could “protect surface and groundwater supplies from pollution generated by legal cannabis farming.”
Felicia Marcus, who is on the board, told KEYT, “the illegal cannabis issue has been a huge one that our enforcement efforts have grown on, and now as cannabis is legalized with more people coming into the fold the expectation is they are going to meet the same rules or even stricter rules.”
However, since 90 percent of illegal pot-growing happens in California, the review board might have to work overtime to address an issue that has clearly gotten out of hand.
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