NICE, Calif. — An abandoned recreational vehicle was the first clue. In this hamlet two hours north of San Francisco and barely a mile from the largest natural freshwater lake in the state, the trailer sat on a hill, hidden from the main drag. Behind it rose a flimsy fence, tall enough to shield its bounty: 50 marijuana plants in hastily constructed wooden boxes.
“This is common,” said Michael Lockett, the chief building official here in Lake County, giving a tour of the now-derelict plot, where a pipe ran from a stream to a large water tank.
It was just one of hundreds of illegal marijuana operations in Lake County, officials said, some of which have been diverting water for thousands of plants.
The scene has been repeated across Northern California. Amid the state’s crippling drought, many communities are fighting not the mere cultivation of cannabis — which is legal in the state, though subject to myriad restrictions — but the growers’ use of water. Marijuana is a thirsty plant, and cultivating it at a time when California residents are subject to water restrictions has become a sticky issue.
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When a statewide drought emergency was declared in January, “the first thing we wanted to address was water theft and marijuana,” said Carre Brown, a supervisor in Mendocino County, a major cannabis hub west of Lake County.
By mid-July, the sheriff there, Thomas D. Allman, had already caught growers siphoning water from springs because wells had run dry too early in the season. “I have told my marijuana team, ‘I want you to fly the rivers, fly the tributaries; let’s prioritize the water diversion,’ ” Sheriff Allman said.
In July, Lake County enacted an ordinance that demanded that growers account for their water supply; as in Mendocino, the county also has a tip line to identify violators. “It’s very pointedly meant to stop a lot of what we’re seeing — the illegal diversions, damming up of creeks, tapping into springs that may be on someone else’s property,” said Kevin Ingram, the principal planner for Lake County.
Late last month, federal and state agents raided the Yurok Indian Reservation in a move requested by tribal elders to halt illegal marijuana farms whose water use threatened the reservation’s supply.
Using Google Earth imagery, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife has estimated that outdoor marijuana cultivation in Mendocino County and Humboldt County doubled between 2009 and 2012, with what the agency described as disastrous effect. A marijuana plant can consume five to 10 gallons of water, depending on the point in its growth cycle. By comparison, a head of lettuce, another of California’s major crops, needs about 3.5 gallons of water.
Not all marijuana growers are cavalier about their water use. Swami Chaitanya, 71, has been tending — and smoking — cannabis for decades. “I grew my first plants in the shadow of the Bank of America in San Francisco on Telegraph Hill in the early ’70s,” Mr. Chaitanya said. (He adopted the name Swami Chaitanya after studies in India, and prefers it to his given name, which he asked not to use.)
Now ensconced in an off-the-grid farm in Mendocino County, Mr. Chaitanya and a few helpers produce a small crop of medical marijuana plants for an Oakland dispensary. Their beds are watered daily from tanks fed by a spring on the property. To minimize the environmental impact, he said, he recycles his wastewater. This year, he has also reduced the number of plants, he said.
Environmentally minded marijuana growers say that illegal operators and water guzzlers are giving them a bad reputation. Seth Little, 28, an organic medicinal marijuana grower near the Lake County town of Clearlake, said neighbors could be resentful. “They just think that we’re all kind of dooming everything,” he said, “and stealing everybody’s water, and dumping chemicals into the aquifers.”
Mr. Little, who has been growing marijuana for nearly five years with a special irrigation system designed to minimize water use, said many fellow growers had been heedless of the water problem. “A large percentage of them are just really not environmentally aware; they’re not in compliance,” he said.
But the artisanal ways of Mr. Little and Mr. Chaitanya can conflict with the demands of the market and, sometimes, the law. Because there are countywide restrictions on the number of marijuana plants even legitimate growers may keep, Mr. Chaitanya said, they have an incentive to make those plants as robust as possible — and that means using more water. Mr. Chaitanya suggested that the problem was exacerbated by confusing regulations.
Sheriff Allman of Mendocino County was skeptical of this. “That sounds like logic they’ve made up after smoking a joint,” he observed.
But, he added, the environmental offenders are not the stereotypical marijuana grower.
“Old hippies are not our problem — old hippies get it,” Sheriff Allman said. “They’re going organic; they’re doing water reduction.” So are “young hippies,” he continued.
“I’m talking about people that move here in April, grow marijuana as fast as they can until October,” Sheriff Allman said. “The 20-year-old kid who wants to make his million bucks, and he’s using these steroid fertilizers. He doesn’t care about how much water he uses, or what he puts in the soil.”
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