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SACRAMENTO, California (Reuters) - Toxic chemicals from illegal marijuana farms hidden deep in California's forests are showing up in rivers and streams that feed the state's water supply, prompting fears that humans and animals may be at risk, data reviewed by Reuters show.

The presence of potentially deadly pollutants in eight Northern and Central California watersheds is the latest sign of damage to the environment from thousands of illegal cannabis plantations, many of them run by drug cartels serving customers in other states, according to law enforcement.

"I don't drink out of the creeks - and I used to," said Sergeant Nathaniel Trujillo, a narcotics expert with the sheriff's department of Trinity County, about 200 miles north of San Francisco. "I grew up drinking out of them."

California accounts for more than 90 percent of illegal U.S. marijuana farming. There are as many as 50,000 marijuana farms in California according to state estimates, and even though voters legalized the drug last November, only about 16,000 growers are expected to seek licenses when commercial cultivation becomes legal next year.

Krom wrote:You do realize that large scale legal commercial cultivation should be able to quickly outproduce and undercut these back woods little plots and drive all the unlicensed ones straight out of business and out of the environment in short order. There is no need to sign up all 50k of them, the overwhelming majority of those who don't will simply go bust or quit because the legal ones should have a tremendous cost advantage.

Jeff250 wrote:You just have to have enough enforcement so that the price of obtaining blackmarket goods is greater than the one of obtaining them legally.

Tunnelcat wrote:What is it with conservatives. When illegal stuff goes on, like these backwoods marijuana grows for example, it's the worst thing in the world and it needs to be stopped at all costs. When corporations do far worse, legally I might add, like poison and denude huge tracts of farmland with loads of fertilizer and toxins, spoil our natural wilderness areas in the name of mining and oil exploration and permanently poison giant swaths of our groundwater resources with fracking, all in the name of almighty capitalism, it's either don't worry about it or tough ★■◆●, because what they do is legal. I don't get it. Your priorities are just plain weird.

Tunnelcat wrote:NS also doesn't realize that large scale illegal marijuana growers are capitalists, not hippy environmentally conscious liberals. It's usually capitalists who don't give a damn about the environment.

Nightshade wrote:

Jeff250 wrote:You just have to have enough enforcement so that the price of obtaining blackmarket goods is greater than the one of obtaining them legally.

Wake me when that happens.

Spidey wrote:Farming is not capitalism, capitalism can be used by farmers for buying seed, equipment etc. but farming itself is not capitalism.

Spidey wrote:Farming is not capitalism, capitalism can be used by farmers for buying seed, equipment etc. but farming itself is not capitalism.