New Cannabis Water Regulations for California Farmers

REGULATIONS COULD BE INDICATIVE OF BROADER SWEEPING POLICY FOR ALL CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

In 2019, the California State Water Resources Control Board adopted an approach to regulate cannabis cultivation and the source of the water supplies used for irrigation. The Board’s approach is to uniformly (for the most part) apply these new regulations throughout California without any consideration for the many differences in the geography, hydrology and climate across the state.

The new policy that I am referring to is the Cannabis Cultivation Policy - Principles and Guidelines for Cannabis Cultivation. Under this policy, the Board has developed very unique rules for a specific crop - cannabis. For instance, a farmer may not use a single drop of water from an adjacent creek to provide irrigation to his/her growing crop during the dry season nor may he/she divert more than 10 gallons of water per minute during the wet season. These restrictions are in place even if the farmer holds a valid water right.

While these new water regulations currently apply only to cannabis farmers, anyone involved in agriculture should be monitoring the Board’s new regulations as they involve water supply and quality issues for an irrigated crop and could be an indication of a broader sweeping policy on the horizon.

Agriculture: Are Stockponds Considered a Water Diversion?

WATER DIVERSION REGULATIONS IMPACTING FARMERS AND CATTLEMEN

Water rights are certainly something that most agricultural operators spend a significant amount of time grappling with due to SB 88 passed in 2015. SB88, among other things, requires that all water diversions in the state over 10 acre-feet install measuring devices to accurately measure the rate and amount of diversion, and all diversions in the state are now subjected to reporting requirements. Since the emergency regulations implementing SB 88 went into effect in 2016, many agricultural operations have struggled to come into compliance with the regulations due to the difficulty of fitting some of these diversions with measuring devices, the cost of compliance, and other factors. In 2017, the California Cattlemen’s Association sponsored AB 589, which was signed by Gov. Brown and provided some relief from SB 88, allowing diverters to self-certify their measurement devices in certain circumstances.

Significant issues, however, often remain with “smaller” diversions (those < 10 acre-feet) due to;

(1) lack of compliance with the registration requirements. Agricultural operators often aren’t aware that their stockponds constitute ‘diversions’ under Water Code 5100(c) under the Board’s interpretation of that statute; and,

(2) the significant and ever-increasing costs of maintaining those water rights.

AB 448, was introduced in the California Assembly on February 11, 2018 to address some of these concerns.

Learn More:

http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB448