California attorney and gardener Chris Van Hook, who holds an environmental studies degree and has worked to address environmental issues for the past thirty years. As a medical cannabis compliance attorney, Van Hook also runs the Clean Green Certification program, which certifies environmental best practices for over 200 gardens between Portland, Oregon and San Diego. Through Clean Green, he offers inspections, organic certifications and compliance consultations; visit Clean Green online at www.cleangreencert.com or call 707-218-6979.
One of the Leaf’s editors recently interviewed Mr. Van Hook to get his expert perspective on the drought currently gripping northern California, and how cannabis farmers can adapt to challenging times.
Chris Conrad: The drought gripping the Western United States poses a grave challenge for everyone. We want to take a look at how it affects marijuana growers and what they can do to improve their output while lowering their water usage. Chris Van Hook of Clean Green Certification certifies organic farming techniques, consults with lawful medical marijuana gardeners in Northern California and was a guest writer for The West Coast Leaf newspaper, which has since become The Leaf Online. We’re going to have him right now, in fact I think I hear him. Is this Chris Van Hook?
Van Hook: Yeah it sure is! How are you Chris?
Conrad: I’m doing terrific Chris. I was just introducing people to what’s going on here with the drought going on in California and you sent me a very interesting report which you put together recently talking about the question of what to do about the drought and how much water people need to use. How is the drought in California affecting cannabis agriculture here?
Van Hook: Okay well, thank you very much and first of all I’m very pleased to be here today and very happy to talk about the hot topic of 2014 and that’s this drought that we’ve been in now for the past year.
Conrad: You consulted with the county of Mendocino on their program for giving people tags for legal medical marijuana gardens, isn’t that correct?
Van Hook: Yeah I figured that I was asked to help run the 9.31 program and I did for about a year before it was implemented. And then I was one of the three cannabis inspectors chosen by the county so I’ve got a background of working with both, you know, Cali officials as well as cannabis growers themselves. So it’s sort of a broad background in California on cannabis.
Conrad: Alright. And so you were just going into this fact that we’ve been in this drought. I think it actually started sometime in 2012 or did it officially start sometime in 2013? I know we had a little bit of rain in December of last Winter, but then come January 2013 it was pretty much just a little bit of moisture dripping out of the clouds every eight months or something since then. It’s very little.
Van Hook: Most of the reservoirs in Northern California are anywhere from 16-39% of capacity. And that is in January. Even where we are in Humboldt county we’re already getting close to 30 wells that are drying up in residential areas around Crescent City. So you know in the thirty-five years that I’ve been working in agriculture here in California I’ve never seen anything like it.
Conrad: And in fact you know another issue there, since you mentioned it about the wells, is that our groundwater is drying up too. In fact I’m down closer to the San Francisco Bay area and we’ve been living in this house for three years. I’ve never seen the soil as dry as it is right now in the midst of what is supposed to be our rainiest season. So it reminds me of when I grew up on the East Coast our family had a shallow well; our neighbors dug deeper wells and they just sucked all of our water away from us. We actually ran out of water repeatedly as a result of that.
So this whole thing about bringing down the water table seems to me, doesn’t that affect other things like the trees and stuff that normally can survive a drought by going deep into the soil? Because if we’re moving this water supply a thousand feet down instead of 50 feet or 20 feet down, that’s a huge problem for a tree.
Van Hook: It’s a huge problem for trees, it’s a huge problem for all agriculture; cannabis and non-cannabis. And certainly the water tables are all replenished by the seasonal rains which you know this year are almost non-existent. But I did run that study in 2010 and 2011 where we did study the water usage of a cannabis farm.
Conrad: Yeah let’s talk about that.
Van Hook: Okay, well it was a very interesting study. A friend of mine, in Mendocino County, a little east of 101 so not along the coast but not in Lake county, grew 25 plants under the Mendocino County program. Both in 2010 and 2011 we studied his water usage and it was very easy to do because he had 60,000 gallons of water storage. So we were able to calculate use only for his garden. It was easy for us to track exactly how much was used.
And actually for those 25 plants both in 2010 and 2011, for the duration of the season, they averaged about 1,600 gallons of water per plant during the entire growing season. And so again we ran the same study again in 2011 and got virtually the same results. What it means of course is that early in the Spring when the plants are small they just use, you know, a cup or two of water a couple times a week.
Conrad: Right.
Van Hook: But by the time you get into August or September when the rivers are most depleted, you’re using somewhere between 10-15 gallons of water almost every day. And what’s often not in the calculus is that the greatest amount of water usage for all agriculture occurs when it’s hottest in August and September, right when the rivers are at their lowest. So it really was an eye opener for us. That grow totaled 40,000 gallons for 25 plants. And then as you start adding up the number of plants just in Mendocino County alone, very quickly we get up close to 32 million gallons of water per day.
Conrad: Wow, that’s unbelievable. That’s like a whole reservoir.
Van Hook: Well it’s actually enough to reduce the flow in all the streams. Anyone from Mendocino County and Southern Humboldt County and Trinity County all see it themselves. We all see now that the rivers are extremely low, and typically they are very low in August and September. Now it’s not only the cannabis industry; it’s also the vineyards and the residential people. Certainly residential estates use a lot of water. But I think what this drought is showing us is that the cannabis farmers need to: 1. assume responsibility for their water use, and 2. need to become a part of the solution; as well as acknowledge that we are all part of the problem as well.
Conrad: The consumers have to take some responsibility for that too, cause we need to somehow hold people accountable for what’s going on with the water. And this is a slight jump here but another issue that’s facing the growers this year is this expanded money that the governor has set forward for enforcement of violation of water sheds and diversion of stuff like that, from my understanding as well. Maybe you could talk to people a little bit about what that means?
Van Hook: Well, thank you. The governor has put an additional 3.2 million dollars into the California Water Resources and the California Fish & Game funds specifically to target water diversions and environmental crimes linked with cannabis. Now that’s my understanding —that it’s going to be relatively targeted to water and environmental crimes with cannabis growing. So that’s going to completely change the paradigm out in the field where these agencies, rightly so, are going to be well funded and then they’re really going to be looking for the major infractions of water use.
So, I think everyone needs to really think carefully this year about growing only what they have the water for and utilizing that water efficiently as possible, as well as not to grow more than they can process properly. Quite often in the outdoor industry it’s not uncommon to have a 30% loss for molds, or mildews, or it gets rained on at the end of the year, or it’s just not processed properly. So all conscientious farmers, and all farmers, need to determine what they can grow properly, what they can process properly, how much water they actually have and then to use that water as carefully as possible.
Conrad: And you know that points out something else which is that the law enforcement prohibition adds to the problem. Think about all that marijuana that’s eradicated; all the water that went into that. And stuff where it’s not being processed in an adequate environment ; where it’s getting mold and stuff during the processing or destroyed somehow. That is all water that’s being lost simply as a matter of criminal enforcement. And then another issue has to do with the fact that as the price of marijuana has dropped I think the output has increased. And so maybe what people need to be thinking about during this time of drought is maybe how to lower the output but increase the value of the product they’re putting out there as a way of compensating and reducing the loss to mold without hurting themselves financially.
Van Hook: Absolutely because, you know, if a cannabis grower is very enthusiastic and they grow more than they can properly process and they lose 30% — you know I’ve been to some farms where 35-40% will be lost because it wasn’t properly cured and processed at the end of the year. Well, all of the water and all of the fertilizer and all of the gas and oil it took to grow that 30% or 35% is wasted. So a conscientious cannabis farmer can reduce their footprint simply by making sure they can grow properly what they do grow, and that it’s properly processed and we reduce and minimize waste to a minimum.
Conrad: So then let’s talk about other ways to reduce and minimize the problem itself. I understand one of the problems is these grow bags which people use to grow above ground and they lose moisture out the sides; let’s talk about how people can reduce their water consumption and still get decent sized plants. And what kind of a size plant you might expect for the amount of water you put in.
Van Hook: Great, well the farm featured in the study averaged about five pounds a plant, which is relatively a good average in the outdoor industry. And you’re right the grow bags are so common that are growing above ground because often, cannabis farmers unfortunately come in and scrape off the top soil and dump the trees and the top soil down the hill and then they put these grow bags on the hard pan. Now with the soil exposed like that it really evaporates a lot of water and so you know there are a number of ways a conscious farm can reduce their water usage.
And one way is if they need to grow in these grow bags, cover them at least half way in the ground first, so that way the natural soil is a great reservoir of moisture; this reduces evaporation. The other thing is I so often see people watering their plants with a gardening hose and shower head at the end of the garden hose, and boy it’s easy to dump 10-15 gallons out of these things while you’re standing there. You know some of these 400 gallon grow pots can easily absorb 10-15 gallons of water. It would be great if the farmers could, like all of standard agriculture, move into the drip irrigation; move into the micro sprinklers where all the water that’s used gets right into the roots zone. So by burying the grow bags at least halfway by using the drip irrigation where you’re minimizing the amount of water on the surface of the soil and minimizing evaporation is a great way of getting water to the root zones which is what’s needed.
And growing what it is that you can really place in the market properly. And of course where you get your water is important. I so often see people say, “Well I’ve got a permit to pump out of the river.” But that is still taking water. It’s still water use. It doesn’t matter if you have a permit that doesn’t give you the moral right to waste water. And so rain water collection is a growing interest in the cannabis industry that’s a great way as far as pumping in the high flows of the Winter and Spring but I don’t think we’re going to be getting that much of that this year.
Conrad: And you know I wanna get back to that point you made about people scraping off the top soil and so forth. The amount of environmental damage I’ve seen at these grow sites where people are chopping down trees and scraping it off — and it seems to me, doesn’t it make sense to leave your top soil, which absorbs the water and gives good drainage, in place and put the bag with that rather than scraping it off? Even if you do what you talked about which is bury it down there it seems to me like you’re creating a bowl which can capture water and then you got to either drain that root and maybe risk root rot and so it’s just not even getting to the clay level; having good drainage by preserving the top soil and working within that using the straw pits with the compost tea. Those kind of processes that actually attempt to conserve the water without having to risk root rot and things like that.
Van Hook: Absolutely. You know, root rot is a problem but it can be prevented. I see a lot of plants, a lot of cannabis plants throughout the year where the people have simply dug a hole in the natural soil and utilized the natural soil as much as possible and amended it if they felt they need. But you’re absolutely right. If you take that top soil which drains well and has a lot of nutrients and acts as a moisture reservoir and use it as a barrier against evaporation, and if you scrape that off and knock it down the hill with a bulldozer, as well as the sheer waste, the sheer environmental and moral waste of cutting the trees down and literally just bulldozing them down the side of the hill, it’s exactly what the anti-cannabis forces use to paint every cannabis farm.
So really, I work in all sorts of agriculture, every type of agriculture in California and there is literally not one crop I see that has the environmental degradation per acre then some of these wild cannabis farmers where they come in with a bulldozer, cut down the trees, scrape off the top soil, push them down a hill, clogging up the streams and then putting grow pots onto the hard pan.
Conrad: And then importing soil from somewhere else to stick into these bags.
Van Hook: Exactly.
— West Coast Leaf News Service