Pot Water
continued from previous page poofing ash out all over your laundry, sawdust aflyin’, pulp mills reeking, stuff gushing into rivers and the ocean. But Humboldt today — a little short on the blue-collar gold of old but still long on Pacific-scrubbed air and mountain-filtered water. We have plenty of both, we’re polluting them less and we have a number of groups focused on fixing the problems. Yes, there are problems. Let’s start with water quality, where our biggest worries are. All of our rivers and several creeks are listed as impaired under the federal Clean Water Act, meaning they do not measure up to water quality standards needed to support beneficial uses. “Beneficial uses” include everything from fish habitat to drinking water. In our North Coast rivers, the term almost invariably refers to salmon, steelhead and other fish species, and the troubles are almost all the same. “Compared to other regions in the state of California, the North Coast is primarily impacted by excess sediment and high temperatures caused primarily by nonpoint sources of runoff,” says
180,000 Gallons per day used to grow pot plants in a watershed
75-100 Percentage by which the number of plants grown in a watershed increased between 2009 and 2012. SOURCE: CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE STUDY OF ILLEGAL WATER DIVERSIONS FOR MARIJUANA CULTIVATION ON PUBLIC AND PRIVATE LANDS IN THREE WATERSHEDS IN HUMBOLDT COUNTY AND ONE IN MENDOCINO COUNTY.
THE EEL RIVER. PHOTO BY JACOB SHAFER
Rebecca Fitzgerald, a supervisor with the state’s North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, explaining that non-point source pollution comes from a diffused source, such as sediment washed into a stream by rainfall (whereas point-source might be something coming straight of a pipe, for instance, at a wastewater treatment plant). Our abundance of rain and history of heavy land
paired with excess turbidity, like the Mad River, and high nutrient counts, like the Salmon and Klamath rivers. The Klamath and its reservoirs harbor other ills, including deadly algae and not enough dissolved oxygen. And several beaches, including popular Moonstone Beach, can become contaminated with bacteria, especially after a big rainfall. Humboldt Bay also is listed as impaired,
use — logging, of course, and rural logging, county and ranch roads — results in volumes of disturbed earth washing into streams, which can then inhibit the ability of salmon and steelhead to spawn and rear. Sediment builds up, channels widen, stripped-away vegetation exposes the now-shallower waters to more sunlight, and they get too warm. Some rivers and creeks are also im-
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18 NORTH COAST JOURNAL • THURSDAY, APRIL 17, 2014 • northcoastjournal.com
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