Well….it’s been a while folks. My apologies; between finishing grad school, looking for steady work and taking on extra writing projects, life has been a little crazy this past year.

Anyway, I recently stumbled across this article on regulating water use by marijuana farms from the East Bay Express and it reminded me of a project I did in grad school. Marijuana farms use a tremendous amount of water; in Northern California, that water typically comes from streams that are home to endangered Coho salmon. As in so many regions of the West, there simply isn’t enough water for everybody — if the marijuana farms continue to flourish, the salmon will suffer.

In the paper I wrote for class, one of my solutions to the problem was that marijuana farms should be regulated like any other agricultural business and seek permits for how much water they can take and when it should be taken. I was pleased to see that this is what Humboldt Assemblyman Jim Wood’s amendment to California water code would do.

Let’s hope this kind of thinking continues at all levels of government.