After the deadliest and most destructive four-year stretch of wildfires in modern California history, Gov. Gavin Newsom took office in January determined to escalate state efforts to limit fire threats and to adopt safer building and fire maintenance practices. Within days, he promised $305 million in additional funding and tasked the state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, known as Cal Fire, with identifying the populated areas most at risk and in need of state attention.

Cal Fire responded in March with a 28-page report that identified 35 priority sites. Many were in Northern California in elevated, forested areas. Several were part of the Bay Area, including in Orinda and Woodside. The agency has already begun work on removing flammable brush, building fire breaks to slow the spread of blazes and improving escape routes.

“California needs an all-of-the-above approach,” declared Cal Fire Director Thom Porter.

But Cal Fire officials also told the San Francisco Chronicle that while the additional resources the state was providing were welcome, they still weren’t enough given the fire risks that California faced. Citing the “massive backlog of forest management work,” Cal Fire said a long-term commitment was crucial.

Cal Fire far short of 33 percent home inspection goal

Three months later, a new report has underscored Cal Fire’s warning of the inadequacy of state efforts at a time in which as many as 3 million homes in the Golden State are in areas with elevated fire risks. KQED, the Northern California Public Broadcasting Service news agency, reports that Cal Fire isn’t coming close to meeting its goals of helping homeowners build “defensible spaces” around their structures that limit fire risks. The report found that Cal Fire did far worse in helping homeowners in unincorporated areas at high risk in Northern and Central California than local governments did helping homeowners in Southern California.

Lake County in the state’s Wine Country was devastated by 2018’s Mendocino Complex blaze, which scorched a record 459,000 acres. Lake County officials say 45 percent of its land was burned. But Cal Fire said it was only able to inspect 12 percent of homes last year in Lake, Sonoma and Napa Counties to ensure that flammable brush and other materials were removed. The agency’s goal is 33 percent.

Hundreds of miles to the southeast in the Sierra Nevada region – home to tens of millions of dead and very flammable trees – Cal Fire was able to inspect only 6 percent of homes in 2018.

Cal Fire officials have said with fire season lasting 50 days longer or more than it used to in the Golden State, they have no choice but to prioritize their limited resources by placing fighting active wildfires ahead of fire safety efforts.

But the agency is trying to do more to promote defensible space. It has hired six fire crews this year and plans to add four more by summer 2020 which focus only on reducing flammable vegetation and waste.

Newsom has already declared fire emergency

For his part, Newsom on March 22 took a step that would have seemed bizarre in past decades. Though no serious fires were then reported in California, he declared an ongoing formal state of emergency over wildfire risks.

Sen. Mike McGuire of Healdsburg is author of SB643, “The Medical Marijuana Public Safety and Environmental Protection Act.” It won broad backing from the Assembly Business & Professions Committee last week after passing the state Senate on a 26-13 vote in June. Its next hurdle is the Assembly Health Committee; a hearing date has not yet been scheduled.

Both media in McGuire’s neck of the Golden State and the national media depict marijuana growing as a profound environmental threat. This is from the Lake County News:

… it is clear that large-scale rogue marijuana grows are having a negative impact on Northern California watersheds.

 

“The impacts are horrendous and the drought has had an exacerbating effect, especially on the North Coast. Entire rivers are running dry as marijuana grows expand and the fourth year of this historic drought sets in,” McGuire said.

 

Rogue operators have cut down tens of thousands of acres of Northern California forests illegally without regard for the environment, neighboring communities, downstream farms, or endangered species. 

 

In addition, tens of thousands of pounds of pesticides, rodenticides and fertilizers have been dumped into watersheds that flow through Northern California communities. 

 

Rogue marijuana grows are the number one source of sediment and nutrient load in Northern California rivers.

Marijuana growers are ‘sucking rivers dry’

Scientific American had a similar take in a July 3 story on its website headlined “California’s 50,000 pot farms are sucking rivers dry.”

The impacts of California’s drought on key fisheries have been of increasing concern for wildlife agencies across the state, which have worked for decades to restore fish populations to their historic levels. In 2014, warm water conditions contributed to a 95 percent mortality of winter run brood salmon in the Sacramento River system. This year, with cold water stocks in the Shasta Reservoir — located in Northern California about 9 miles northwest of Redding—at record low levels, Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW), said the state faces another loss of brood stock this winter.

 

Across the state, there are an estimated 50,000 small pot farms. In the last decade, under the auspices of Proposition 215, which legalized marijuana for medical use, there has been a steady increase in the amount of cannabis cultivation in Shasta, Tehama and Humboldt counties, according to DeWayne Little, a lieutenant with CDFW’s Watershed Enforcement Team.

 

A study by CDFW and published in the journal PLOS ONE in March, found that in four watersheds that are home to both coho salmon and large numbers of marijuana farms — which use about 22 liters of water per day, per plant — the pot cultivation drained much of the river’s water … .

Farmers may get tough rules they want

This sort of media coverage and horror stories in farmers’ testimony to legislative committees are making it easy for McGuire to round up support — even in an era in which old attitudes about marijuana being a dangerous gateway drug seem to be fading.

Per the Lake County News, his bill would “provide a legal framework for those farmers who are working with McGuire on this legislation. The bill provides a regulatory framework for the industry covering the issues of environmental protection and water regulations, law enforcement, licensing, public health related to edibles and product testing, to marketing, labeling, taxing, transporting, zoning, local control and re-sale (and more).”

Here’s a link to the official Assembly analysis of the measure. The only formal opponent of the legislation is the Fresno Cannabis Association.