A8 THURSDAY, AUGUST 29, 2019 LATIMES.COM
Garbage littering the
ground. Miles of plastic
pipes diverting water. A
stockpile of fertilizers, soil
and hazardous chemicals.
Nearby were roughly
6,000 springy, vibrantly
green marijuana plants
winding through the arid
forest, oddly out of place,
and doused with toxic
chemicals.
Mexican cartels have
been operating illegal grows
on California’s public lands
for decades, their numbers
slowly increasing. Advo-
cates for legal marijuana
thought a legal market
would stem the illicit pro-
duction, but the number of
illegal grows has stayed
steady in California. In other
states, their numbers are on
the rise.
Traffickers have become
more adept at evading law
enforcement, and are ex-
panding into new territories
nationwide, said Mike Mc-
Kinney, assistant special
agent in charge for the U.S.
Forest Service Intermoun-
tain region.
“They’re getting deeper,
darker and harder to find,”
said McKinney. “They’re go-
ing into areas that haven’t
seen human foot traffic in
forever.”
Grow sites run by Mexi-
can traffickers have been
found in states across the
country, including Oregon,
Washington, Nevada, New
Mexico, Utah, Colorado and
Texas. In 2018, law enforce-
ment raided 3,847 outdoor
grows nationwide, predomi-
nantly operated by organ-
ized drug traffickers on fed-
eral lands, according to
HIDTA figures.
Those raided sites are es-
timated to be just a quarter
of the illegal public-land
grows in existence.
Mourad Gabriel, co-di-
rector of the Integral Ecol-
ogy Research Center, a con-
servation nonprofit that has
led the efforts to clean up the
sites and assess their im-
pact, estimates there are
more than 1,700 known sites
in California alone.
“Illegal poaching, illegal
cutting of trees, the applica-
tion of illegal pesticides, the
diverting of millions of gal-
lons of water for just one
site,” said Gabriel. “Extrap-
olating that to thousands of
sites in California is a signifi-
cant environmental threat.”
Carbofuran is a signature
of illegal Mexican grows, a
pesticide so hazardous that
a teaspoon can kill a fully
grown bear, according to
Gabriel. Effectively banned
in the United States, carbo-
furan is smuggled across the
U.S.-Mexico border and
used by growers to protect
the cannabis plants from
wildlife. Growers mix carbo-
furan into the water feeding
the plants, and also spray it
directly on the ground and
foliage that border them.
Research conducted by
the Integral Ecology Re-
search Center has found
traces of carbofuran in
streams and rivers, and also
in animals — living and dead
— including at-risk species
such as the Pacific fisher.
The damage doesn’t stop
there. Growers leave behind
tons of garbage, such as car
batteries, propane tanks
and food along with other
caustic pesticides, herbi-
cides and rodent killers.
Grow sites on public
lands also compromise Cali-
fornia’s water supply, poi-
soning watersheds and di-
verting flows from springs
and streams.
Experts estimate that
each plant uses nine to 12
gallons of water per day. A
grow site with 6,000 plants,
such as the recently raided
site in the Sierra National
Forest, poaches a minimum
of 5.4 million gallons of water
a year.
Multiply this by the thou-sands and illegal grow sites
in California are sucking up
millions, potentially billions,
of gallons of water a year.
“Seeing this just makes
me sick,” said Dean Gould,
forest supervisor for the Si-
erra National Forest, while
visiting the illegal grow site
last week. “We have the most
selfish possible example of
the most destructive use of
land to benefit a very select
few.”Even after the sites are
busted and the plants re-
moved, they are expensive to
clean up, requiring crews to
hike, often for miles to reach
them. The locations are typi-
cally so rugged and remote
that garbage must be bun-
dled up and flown out via
helicopter.
Since October of 2018,
Forest Service agencies
in California spent $1.5 mil-
lion just on equipment and
disposal for cleanups last
year, a number that doesn’t
include the cost of person-
nel.
Nationally, the Forest
Service spends roughly $
million annually on enforce-
ment alone, a number that
doesn’t include the cost of
cleanups, which typically
have a price tag of $15,000 or
more per site.
Dealing with grow sites
also absorbs funds from
other agencies, such as the
California Department of
Fish and Wildlife and locallaw enforcement.
“It’s like a sinking ship.
As fast as we’re plugging the
holes, we’ve got people si-
phoning all that water off,”
said Gould. “This is having a
direct impact on the bottom
line.”
While supporters hoped
Proposition 64 would reduce
the profitability of illicit
weed farms, legal marijuana
in California — taxed and
regulated — remains more
expensive than the black
market stuff, giving the lat-
ter a competitive edge. Out-
side the state is an even big-
ger market for black market
cannabis.
“What nobody factored in
when they were selling this
big myth ... is that 75-80% of
the marijuana cultivated is
shipped out of California be-
cause the profit margin is
bigger,” said Ruzzamenti.
In February, Gov. Gavin
Newsom vented about the
continuing illegal cannabis
farms, saying he would de-ploy the National Guard to
assist with efforts. “They are
getting worse, not better,”
Newsom said at the time.
A year earlier, U.S. Rep.
Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale)
introduced the Protecting
Lands Against Narcotics
Trafficking Act, which
would demand stricter fines
and penalties for environ-
mental crimes caused by il-
legal grow sites and would
also allocate additional re-
sources for enforcement and
eradication. So far, the legis-
lation hasn’t moved for-
ward.
In the meantime, illegal
grow sites continue to flour-
ish.
“They’re business peo-
ple,” said Gould of the drug
trafficking organizations.
“They are going to go where
they can to make the most
money with the least pain.
They are going to continue
to test and test and test to
see if the forest is one of
those places.”Legal pot hasn’t eased forest damage
[Marijuana,from A1]
DOZENSof officials recently visited an illegal grow site in the Sierra National Forest. They saw 6,000 plants doused with toxic chemicals.Photographs byKent NishimuraLos Angeles TimesTHE KITCHEN of a cannabis grow site. Such sites despoil natural areas in a
variety of ways, including left-behind garbage, propane tanks and pesticides.THERE ARE more than 1,700 known illegal canna-
bis grows in California, according to Mourad Gabri-
el’s nonprofit, the Integral Ecology Research Center.SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico
— Dorian became a Catego-
ry 1 hurricane on Wednesday
as it struck the U.S. Virgin Is-
lands, with forecasters say-
ing it could grow to Category
3 status as it nears the U.S.
mainland as early as the
weekend.
The British Virgin Is-
lands and the Puerto Rican
islands of Vieques and Cule-
bra were also in Dorian’s
path with landslides, wide-
spread flooding and power
outages possible in the U.S.
territory, which faced its first
major test of emergency pre-
paredness since the 2017 dev-
astation of Hurricane Maria.
Dorian prompted Presi-
dent Trump to declare a
state of emergency Tuesday
night and order federal as-
sistance for local author-
ities.
At 11 a.m. Eastern, Dorian
was over St. Thomas in the
U.S. Virgin Islands. The U.S.
National Hurricane Center
said it had maximum sus-
tained winds of 75 mph while
moving northwest at 13 mph.
The Hurricane Center
said Dorian could grow into
a dangerous Category 3
storm as it pushes north-
west toward Florida.
A hurricane-tropical
storm warning was in effect
for Puerto Rico, with Dorian
expected to dump 4 to 6
inches of rain with isolated
downpours of 8 inches.
It’s a forecast that wor-
ries many in Puerto Rico be-
cause blue tarps still cover
about 30,000 homes nearly
two years after Hurricane
Maria. The island’s 3.2 mil-
lion inhabitants also depend
on an unstable power grid
that remains prone to out-
ages since it was destroyed
by Maria, a Category 4
storm.Ramonita Torres, a thin,
stooped, 74-year-old wom-
an, lives by herself in the im-
poverished, flood-prone
neighborhood of Las Monjas
in the capital, San Juan. She
was still trying to rebuild the
home she nearly lost after
Maria but was not able to se-
cure the pieces of zinc that
now serve as her roof.
“There’s no money for
that,” she said, shaking her
head.
A reported 23,000 cus-
tomers were without power
across Puerto Rico by early
Wednesday afternoon, ac-
cording to Angel Figueroa,
president of a union that
represents power workers.
Police said an 80-year-old
man in the northern town of
Bayamon died Wednesday
after he fell trying to climb
up to his roof to clear it of de-
bris ahead of the storm.
In the U.S. Virgin Islands,
which is still struggling to re-
cover from hurricanes Irma
and Maria, officials were re-
porting power outages and
light rain by 1:30 p.m. East-
ern.“Winds have picked up
significantly. We’re starting
to get some of those heavier
gusts,” the governor’s
spokesman, Richard Motta,
said in a telephone inter-
view.
Dorian earlier had been
projected to brush the west-
ern part of the U.S. territory,
and the change in course
caught many off guard in the
tiny island of Vieques just
east of Puerto Rico, a popu-
lar tourist destination that
now lies in Dorian’s path.
Trump sent a tweet, be-
fore the storm became a hur-
ricane, assuring that “We are
tracking closely tropical
storm Dorian as it heads, as
usual, to Puerto Rico. FEMA
and all others are ready, and
will do a great job.”
He added a jab at Puerto
Rican officials who have ac-
cused the government of a
slow and inadequate re-
sponse to Hurricane Maria:
“When they do, let them
know it, and give them a big
Thank You — Not like last
time. That includes from the
incompetent Mayor of SanJuan!”
The mayor, Carmen
Yulin Cruz, tweeted that
Trump needs to “calm down
get out of the way and make
way for those of us who are
actually doing the work on
the ground,” adding that
maybe he “will understand
this time around THIS IS
NOT ABOUT HIM; THIS IS
NOT ABOUT POLITICS;
THIS IS ABOUT SAVING
LIVES.”
Dorian earlier caused
power outages and downed
trees in Barbados and St.
Lucia.
Although top govern-
ment officials in Puerto Rico
said they were prepared for
the storm and had sufficient
equipment, a couple of may-
ors, including those in the
western region, said they did
not have enough generators
or shelters that were proper-
ly set up.
Jose Ortiz, executive di-
rector of Puerto Rico’s Elec-
tric Power Authority, ac-
knowledged that the distri-
bution system still has weak
areas and could “suffer”under winds of 50 to 60 mph.
However, he stressed the
agency has the needed in-
ventory, including more
than 120,000 lights, 23,
poles and 7,400 transform-
ers.
But Freddyson Martinez,
vice president of a power
workers’ union, told the As-
sociated Press that while the
electric grid has improved in
some areas, he worries
about a lack of power-line
workers and post-Maria
fixes that include lines af-
fixed to palm trees.
The island’s transporta-
tion secretary acknowl-
edged that crews are still re-
building roads damaged or
blocked by Maria, including
more than 1,000 that remain
blocked by that storm’s
landslides.
Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda
Vazquez urged those living
in flood-prone areas or
under tarps to move into one
of the island’s 360 shelters.
Officials also said public
schools and government of-
fices would remain closed
through at least Thursday.Dorian blows through U.S. Virgin Islands
Puerto Rican islands
Vieques and Culebra
are also in the storm’s
path. Trump declares
a state of emergency.
associated press