Russian River Vineyard Frost Protection: Legal Briefs or AK-47s?

Russian River area growers suing the state over frost protection rules might wonder why illegal diversions sucking the Eel River dry are getting no attention at all.

Maybe it’s because the winegrape growers have made the mistake of firing back at the state with legal papers, not AK-47s.

Today’s story from the Willits News: Thirsty marijuana grows sucking Eel River dry describes the extent of damage done by at least 21 illegal diversions. Just one of which took 300,000 gallons this summer.

Says the News article:

In September this year at Leggett, the South Fork of the Eel was running at about eight cubic feet per second just over half of the typical rate measured over 38 years. At Miranda the river flow was 34 cfs or about 10 cfs less than normal measured over 71 years.

With a stable human population (measured by the census), a declining cattle and sheep industry and little other legal agriculture, one is left to wonder “where has all the water gone?”

If marijuana plants need a gallon a day during the summer, this suggests there are at least seven million pot plants were growing in the South Fork watershed upstream of Miranda, with nearly five million of these growing upstream of Leggett. This doesn’t even take into account that in July the river started with nearly double the “normal” flow rate, so there could be twice the number of plants or they could be thirstier than this estimate.

Read the whole story.

I suppose it’s all about the caliber of the people you hire to represent you: 7.62mm versus 20# bond.