State lawmakers approved a bill that establishes a process for regulating the marijuana-growing operations that have sprung up along or near thousands of Northern California’s pristine trout, steelhead, and salmon rivers. Such operations often dewater stream channels, pollute waterways with fertilizers and poisons, and create dangerous hazards for anglers. Assembly Bill 243 was approved in the closing days of the legislative session, and Governor Jerry Brown signed it into law.
A legislative committee analysis for AB-243 paints a graphic picture of the environmental damage caused by the cultivation of marijuana. “According to some estimates, there are 30,000 cultivation sites in the tri-county area of Humboldt-Mendocino-Trinity and an additional 10,000 or more cultivation sites elsewhere in California. As a result, California land, watersheds, and some species have been significantly damaged by some cultivation operations,” the report says.
“Trespass grows,” which are those cultivated without permission on public, tribal, or privately owned land, have been associated with wildlife poisoning, the use and dumping of fertilizers and pesticides, illegal water diversions and pollution, land disturbance, and severe problems with garbage and human waste. “These industrial-size marijuana grows, taking place in the National Forests and on private timberland in some of the state’s most remote and ecologically sensitive areas, are the subject of a recent study by California Department of Fish and Wildlife (DFW). The study showed that during drought conditions, water demand for marijuana cultivation exceeded stream flow in three of four study watersheds and that diminished stream flow from this water-intensive activity is likely to have lethal to sub-lethal effects on salmon and steelhead trout, which are listed under the state and federal Endangered Species Acts.”
Assembly Bill 243 requires that the state regulate marijuana cultivation the same as it does for agricultural operations. The legislative analysis estimates that marijuana growers and distributers are doing $16 billion worth of business in California.
“We desperately need the resources to manage this industry that has boomed on the north coast and to protect our rivers and forests,” said Assembly Member Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, who sponsored the bill and played a leading role in winning its approval. “I am disappointed we were not able to reach an agreement that included those resources this year.”
The resources to which Wood was referring were a provision in an early draft of AB-243 that would have had the state charge an excise tax on cultivation that would have generated $60 million for environmental cleanup and public safety. The funding provision was removed from the measure before final passage.
The compromise measure was supported by a number of conservation organizations: “California’s watersheds and wildlife have taken a serious hit from an unregulated cannabis production industry in recent years, with the ongoing drought making the situation even worse,” said Curtis Knight, executive director of California Trout. “Thanks to the leadership of Assembly Member Wood, we will finally see significant resources dedicated to protecting and restoring lands and waters that have been decimated by bad actors in this industry.” In addition to CalTrout, other groups supporting the bill included Trout Unlimited, the Sierra Club of California, the Trust for Public Land, and The Nature Conservancy.
According to a legislative analysis, AB-243 requires that the DFW, in consultation with the State Water Board, establish a multiagency task force to address environmental impacts associated with marijuana cultivation. It also requires the task force to convert the existing Marijuana Cultivation Pilot Program into a permanent statewide enforcement effort in order to “ensure the reduction of adverse impacts of marijuana cultivation on water quality and fish and wildlife.” It requires the DFW to “adopt regulations to enhance the fees on any entity cultivating marijuana that impacts a bed, channel or bank of any river, stream or lake” and each regional water board to “address discharge of waste resulting from medical marijuana cultivation and associated activities.” And it requires the State Department of Food and Agriculture to establish a program to license indoor and outdoor cultivation of medical marijuana and to establish a method for identifying medical marijuana plants for regulation in order to thwart unlicensed cultivators. “The unique identification program allows for the tracking of medicinal marijuana plants to ensure that marijuana is not being diverted to the black market,” according to the bill analysis. “This allows swifter eradication actions against illegal grows while avoiding the accidental eradication of legal medicinal plantings. This need is made all the more dire by the current drought, which exacerbates the harm caused by the illegal diversion of water to cultivate marijuana.”
In addition to AB-243, lawmakers approved and on October 9 the governor signed Senate Bill 643, by Senator Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg, and Assembly Bill 266, by Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, which creates a Bureau of Medical Marijuana Regulation that will regulate medical marijuana dispensaries. According to the legislative analysis, the state made a $10 million loan from the General Fund to pay for the bureau’s initial regulatory work. The loan would be repaid by January 1, 2022, from income generated from licensing fees and fines and penalties from enforcement activities. AB-243 also authorizes the bureau to make grants to help local governmental agencies pay for regulation and enforcement work.
Here are other measures signed into law following the recently completed legislative session, along with additional fly-fishing-related news.
The Smith River — Senate Joint Resolution 3 urges the president and congress to establish permanent safeguards for the currently unprotected North Fork of the Smith River watershed, preventing any mining activities that would have potential impacts on water supplies, economies, and the environment.
Suction Gold Dredging — Senate Bill 637, authored by Senator Ben Allen, D-Santa Monica, requires increased state regulation to protect streams and rivers from the environmental impacts of suction gold dredging. “Dredging alters fish habitat by changing the river bottom and often reintroduces mercury, left over from historic mining operations,” said the Nevada City-based Sierra Fund, which advocated aggressively for the measure. “These machines can turn a clear-running stream into a murky watercourse unfit for swimming or fishing.” The measure comes after nearly a decade of litigation among tribes, conservationists, and miners. A moratorium on the environmentally destructive practice has been in effect since 2009, but a recent court decision has cast uncertainty on it and prompted clarification from the legislature, according to the Sierra Fund.
Wild Mokelumne — Assembly Bill 142, introduced by Assembly Member Frank Bigelow, R-O’Neils, requires that the Natural Resources Agency study portions of the Mokelumne River to be included for protection and management in the state Wild and Scenic River system.
Screening Diversions — Assembly Bill 92, introduced by the Assembly Budget Committee, requires that the DFW notify landowners whose diversions of water from streams are deleterious to salmon and steelhead that they must install fish-blocking screens.
Fishing License Terms — State lawmakers failed to take action on Senate Bill 345, which would have required that the state issue fishing licenses for a full year, no matter when they are purchased during the year, rather than the current practice of having all licenses expire on December 31. The bill was introduced by Senator Tom Berryhill, R-Twain Harte, who also sponsored a similar measure that failed in 2014. The state senate approved SB-345, but it died in a state assembly committee. The California Sportfishing League, which sponsored SB-345, argued that the new licensing period would increase the number sold and increase revenue for the DFW, an agency with income that is partially generated by fishing license fees, which increase automatically each year.
“The high cost of fishing has contributed to an unprecedented decline in annual fishing license sales,” said Marko Milikotin, executive director of the league, a fishing activist group. “Our aim is to increase participation rates by making fishing affordable and accessible, which will have the added benefit of protecting jobs and communities dependent on outdoor recreation.” According to DFW licensing data, 1.112 million anglers purchased resident fishing licenses in 2010, compared with 990,474 in 2014. In 2010, the DFW received $43.9 million in revenue from those licenses, compared with $42.5 million in 2014. During that same period, the cost of the annual resident license rose from $39.50 to $43.50, in part due to the automatic annual fee increase.
CEQA Lawsuits — Lawmakers also failed to approve Assembly Bill 1398, introduced by Assembly Member Scott Wilk, R-Visalia, which would have prohibited lawsuits over provisions and use of the California Environmental Quality Act, which is better known by the acronym CEQA. Conservation activists have used the provisions of CEQA to protect rivers, streams, fish, and other natural resources. They have sometimes taken violators to court to enforce the law.
Trout Hatcheries — The California Department of Fish and Wildlife is working to keep hundreds of thousands of trout alive in the American River Hatchery near Sacramento after warm water temperatures killed approximately 155,000 fish. According to the DFW, “A chiller that cools water at the hatchery about 18 miles east of Sacramento unexpectedly failed, and warm temperatures killed most of the Eagle Lake species of trout being raised at the hatchery. Failure of the hatchery equipment may be related to work by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, which owns the hatchery, but the exact cause is not clear and is under investigation. The loss included 155,000 of the 199,133 Eagle Lake trout, 300 of the 61,839 Shasta trout, and five of the 230,000 Lahontan cutthroat trout.”
DFW officials also said that the Mt. Shasta Hatchery in Shasta County was again partially operating after being quarantined since May to prevent the spread of whirling disease. Officials had found the disease present in trout at the Darrah Springs Trout Hatchery on Battle Creek, and some of them were transferred to the Mt. Shasta facility, located in the city of Mt. Shasta. DNA tests now show no disease in the trout at the Mt. Shasta Hatchery. “Initial fears were that all of the approximately 1.1 million fish being raised at the Mt. Shasta Hatchery would have to be destroyed,” said the DFW. “The recent test results indicated that only approximately 2,500 fish need to be destroyed to curb the spread of the disease.” Whirling disease is caused by a parasite that destroys the cartilage in the vertebral column of trout and salmon.
Judge Says Do More to Curb Ag Pollution — In August, Sacramento Superior Court Judge Timothy Frawley ordered the state and the Central Coast Regional Water Board to create new rules to protect surface and groundwater from agricultural pollution. The decision is the result of a 2013 lawsuit filed by five nonprofit organizations charging that existing waste-discharge requirements were not protecting the environment. Parties in the suit included the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations and the California Sportfishing Protection Alliance. A copy of the lawsuit is available at project-v-state-of-california.
Awards galore: This is the award season for fly fishers, conservationists, and outdoor writers. Here are just a few:
A photograph of two kids fishing won the grand prize among 200 submissions in the California Trout Photography Contest. The photo was taken by Scott Otvos of Pleasanton and titled “My Two Boys . . .” The photo “captures our belief that abundant wild fish indicates healthy waters, and healthy waters mean a better California now and for future generations,” said CalTrout in announcing the top award. The top photos and winners in all the other contest categories can be seen at http://caltrout.org/photo-contest-winners.
At its annual conference in late September at north Lake Tahoe, the Sierra Nevada Alliance (SNA) presented its Dean Malley Sun Tzu Award to Dr. Mark Drew, who has spearheaded California Trout’s Sierra Meadows and Headwaters Initiative. “Mark has worked tirelessly for the past several years on cutting-edge projects to benefit fish, water, and people in our Sierra communities,” the SNA said in the award presentation, which focused on his work settling a long-standing lawsuit over water. “The settlement was finally reached last year, which helps keep water in Rush and Lee Vining creeks to protect Mono Lake as well as wild trout in the streams while still meeting the water needs of the local communities and the LA water district.” Dean Malley is one of the founders of SNA, and the award recognizes an accomplishment that involves activism and coalition building.
In addition, the SNA presented its Sierra Lighthouse Award to the American River Conservancy for its work protecting and stewarding land in the watersheds of the American and Cosumnes Rivers.
Davis resident Tom Martens won first place in the John Reginato Conservation Award category in the annual Outdoor Writer’s Association of California (OWAC) writing and photography contest for four magazine columns. The award was presented at the OWAC awards dinner at Big Bear Lake in Southern California. Subjects of the columns, which were published in California Fly Fisher, included an update on the Sacramento–San Joaquin Delta, an in-depth interview with Charlton Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and conservation efforts and threats to the Smith River in far Northern California. “The John Reginato Conservation Award is named after an OWAC co-founder and exemplifies his life-long passion to conserve fish, wildlife, and other outdoor resources,” states the OWAC description of the award. Other OWAC award winners included Tom Stienstra for Best Outdoor Series and Best Newspaper Feature Story, published in the San Francisco Chronicle; Bill Sunderland won the Phil Ford Humor Award for “A Guide to the OFFF,” published in California Fly Fisher.
