KLAMATH COUNTY — On the drive between his family’s cattle ranch in Sprague River and a grazing allotment in the Black Hills, Jimmy Gallagher pointed out what appeared to be illegal marijuana grows along the road, one of which had recently been raided by law enforcement officers.

“They’re doing their damnedest,” he said of local law enforcement, “but it’s hard because they’re so outnumbered and underfunded.”

Todd Fleisher, Gallagher’s brother-in-law, agreed.

“It’s getting ridiculous,” Fleisher said.

In the Black Hills, Gallagher stopped beside the watering hole where his family’s cattle drink. Last year, Gallagher said, thieves stole water from this spot, using trucks with 500-gallon tanks.

The theft was especially troublesome during last summer’s severe drought.

Gallagher said he’s even more concerned about his family’s safety.

The illegal marijuana industry has had devastating impacts on rural Oregon and agriculture. Like a many-headed hydra monster in Greek mythology, illegal marijuana growers have stolen water, polluted the land and water, violated land use laws, driven up farmland prices, caused labor problems and endangered citizens.

Although new state laws and added funding are helping law enforcement wrangle the monster, farmers and community leaders say more still needs to be done.

How we got here

Hemp and marijuana — related cannabis plants — may be grown legally in Oregon by farmers as long as they register with the state Department of Agriculture and other agencies. Growers must pay fees and follow specific rules.

But, as the state quickly discovered, not everyone plays by the rules — especially when it comes to a crop like marijuana, which is far more profitable to grow without a license and sell out-of-state. Some who grow marijuana illegally claim to be hemp farmers.

Illegal marijuana, according to law enforcement officials, generates billions of dollars in profits and is grown largely by international drug cartels and foreign criminals. Southern Oregon now rivals Northern California’s notorious “Emerald Triangle” for growing illegal marijuana.

During raids in 2021 alone, according to public records, Southern Oregon officials across four counties — Jackson, Douglas, Klamath and Josephine — seized pot exceeding $2.7 billion in value.

Illegal water use

According to public records the Oregon Water Resources Department released Tuesday to the Capital Press, there’s been at least a 267% increase in water-theft-related complaints and investigations associated with cannabis during the past three years.

In 2019, there were 150 complaints or investigations of reported illegal water use associated with marijuana and hemp.

The number of complaints jumped to 344 in 2020 and 550 in 2021. The water resources department has already received 6 complaints of cannabis-related water theft this month.

Not all of the water theft is tied to illegal marijuana grows. According to Scott Prose, regional assistant watermaster and hemp specialist for the water department, many cases of illegal water use can be traced to licensed hemp growers who have little farming background or knowledge of water law and don’t always realize they’re taking more water than allowed.

Illegal marijuana growers, however, are more likely to knowingly steal water. Thieves regularly tap into hydrants, pump water from rivers and streams, dam creeks, break into tanks and truck water to grow sites from fee-for-service bulk water stations, which store drinking water.

“The water trucking business has gone bonkers,” said Jackson County Sheriff Nathan Sickler.

Racquel Rancier, senior water policy coordinator with the water resources department, said illegal water use “impacts those that are lawfully using water, fish habitat and downstream users.”

Pollution

The second ugly head on the monster is pollution.

Detective Kile Henrich, who supervises the Josephine County marijuana enforcement team, said he has visited dozens of grow sites littered with open containers of fertilizer and pesticides, human filth and tangles of electrical wires posing fire hazards.

Other officers describe abandoned PVC pipe, tarps, buckets, stream banks laden with aluminum cans and food wrappers and slumping hoop houses.

“Growers have left a big scar on the land,” said Sickler, the Jackson County sheriff.

It’s not exclusive to Southern Oregon.

Barb Iverson, owner of Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm in Woodburn, said at least four operations were near her property. She said growers fled one of the locations after harvest, leaving an abandoned house, junk cars and shredded sheets of plastic.

“I think it’s more prevalent here than we realize,” said Iverson. “We focus on Southern Oregon, but it’s here. It’s here in the (Willamette) Valley.”

Land use violations

Often, landowners are fined — sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars — for land use violations committed by illegal marijuana growers posing as legal hemp growers to whom they have leased acreage.

According to Sickler, the Jackson County sheriff, the county is “finding many land leasers have been less than honest with the property owners about what they are cultivating, as well as what permitting and licensing have been obtained.”

Roger Pearce, Jackson County hearings officer, said landowners, whether or not they realized they were leasing to an illegal operation, may be held liable for pollution, illegal water use, construction of unpermitted structures and failure to register farm labor camps.Inflated pricesReal estate experts say although some irredeemably damaged properties lose value, overall, illegal marijuana is driving up rents and land prices.

Part of the equation is more demand for limited land.

The other part is crop value. Illegal marijuana growers, with their high-value crop, can typically afford to pay more than the average farmer.

“The cannabis industry has made it more difficult for the traditional ag community to rent or lease or acquire land,” said Jim Johnson, land use expert at the Oregon Department of Agriculture.

In a study of the impact of illegal marijuana production on rural land prices in Humboldt County, California, agricultural economist Benjamin Schwab and land use researcher Van Butsic found that when the median marijuana density in a watershed is doubled, farmland values increase 3% to 4%.

Oregon Rep. Pam Marsh, a Democrat who represents southern Jackson County, said her constituents are concerned.

“It’s really about these operations taking up land, making it more difficult for farmers to compete,” said Marsh.‘Sucking labor’Some farmers say illegal marijuana growers also outcompete legal farmers for laborers.

Several nonprofit leaders told the Capital Press that workers they have interviewed said they chose to work for illegal marijuana operations because they were promised higher wages. The illegal farms often pose as legal hemp or marijuana farms when advertising for workers.

“(The illegal industry) is unbelievable, out of control. It’s just sucking labor,” said Michael Moore, general manager of Quail Run Vineyards in the Rogue Valley.

Andrea Cantu-Schomus, spokeswoman for the Oregon Department of Agriculture, said farmers in every state report the labor shortage “is the greatest limiting factor on their farms.”

“While (ODA) cannot answer specifically if unlicensed cannabis is making the labor issue worse, any pressure on the availability of labor will have consequences to the agriculture industries who rely on labor to meet their business needs,” Cantu-Schomus wrote in an email.

Slavery and safety

Worse still are the tragic human impacts.

Henrich, the Josephine County detective, said he has visited illegal grow sites that have no restrooms and are littered with toilet paper and feces. Cardboard boxes are used for workers’ homes.

At one site, he found an aging pig carcass that workers had been carving for food.

The Josephine County Sheriff’s Office estimates thousands to tens of thousands of people work on illegal marijuana operations statewide, and experts say many are victims of human trafficking, or slavery.

“There’s a lot of deceit that goes into this recruitment,” said Robert Hammer, special agent in charge of investigations for the Department of Homeland Security.

Hammer estimates 50% of the workers are from Mexico, Central America and South America. Others are from China, Russia and Bulgaria. Some speak Hebrew. Only occasionally, workers are U.S. citizens.

Hammer, along with Kimberly McCullough, legislative director in the state Attorney General’s Office, said Oregon needs a more “victim-centered approach” to enforcement. They say workers often scatter in fear during raids, but it’s important for them to be helped.

“We don’t yet have a uniform coordinated response,” McCullough said. “We want to create some model policies and training for law enforcement.”

Community members, too, are endangered. Southern Oregon residents have reported being followed by vehicles, hearing shots and having knives pulled on them.

“It’s the Wild West,” said Moore, the vineyard owner.

Solutions

Most people agree that Oregon’s illegal marijuana industry is a big problem. But farmers, legislators and officials disagree on how to solve it.

“I’d like to see the federal government get involved,” said Josephine County Sheriff Dave Daniel.

U.S. Rep. Cliff Bentz, who represents Southern and Eastern Oregon, has called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for help. Kevin Sonoff, public affairs officer for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Oregon district, said the agency is “investigating.”

Law enforcement officers say they want stiffer penalties, especially for repeat offenders.

Some advocates of legal marijuana say the problem isn’t that marijuana legalization failed, but rather that more states haven’t legalized it. Until more states — and the federal government — make marijuana legal, they say, the black market will continue.

Critics, in contrast, say making marijuana legal nationwide would create an even bigger mess and increase demand for lower-priced illegally grown pot. Oregon created this chaos, they say, by legalizing marijuana without an adequate plan to track and enforce it.

“The state woefully underfunded the regulatory agencies before allowing this,” said Sickler, sheriff of Jackson County. “It was like: ‘Let’s open the floodgates and see what happens.’ You can’t put everything back in the jar.”

Legislative efforts

Legislators, nonetheless, are trying to squeeze the monster back into the jar.Oregon tweaked its hemp rules this year to make testing for THC — the substance that gets people high — more enforceable, and in 2021, state legislators passed House Bill 3000, which strengthened tracking and created a map law enforcement officers can use to determine if a site is licensed.

In December, Gov. Kate Brown called a special session during which lawmakers approved $25 million for law enforcement efforts and $5 million for oversight of water use and theft.

Further legislative proposals are expected in Oregon’s 2022 session.

According to Marsh and Sen. Jeff Golden, D-Ashland, a few bills are in the works.

The first, Senate Bill 1564, would temporarily allow the state agriculture department to stop issuing industrial hemp grower licenses until the department deems the situation under control.

The bill faces opposition from farm groups, which say legal hemp growers should not be punished.

This wouldn’t be the first time hemp was targeted. House Bill 3000 was similarly criticized for placing additional fees and requirements on hemp operations.

“It’s frustrating when they raise our fees,” said Iverson, the Woodburn-area farmer, who grows legal hemp, among other crops. “We’re the easy targets.”

Golden said that while he understands there will be resistance to SB 1564, he thinks it’s necessary to get the current mess in order before creating an even bigger cannabis industry.

“I’m saying: ‘Folks, let us take a breather. We’re drowning,’” he said.

Meanwhile, an as-yet unnumbered bill is in the works in the Oregon House Water Committee. Legislators say the bill will stiffen penalties for water theft and increase the state Water Resources Department’s enforcement capacity.

This bill, farm advocates say, will only be accepted by the farm community if it is highly targeted.

“This bill will have to be very carefully sculpted so it applies in limited circumstances,” said Marsh.

Other potential proposals include providing grants to nonprofits that help human trafficking victims and creating rules around due process before a site can be raided.

While policymakers continue their tug-of-war, Oregon farmers continue to be surrounded by nests of illegal activity.

For cattle ranchers Jimmy Gallagher and Todd Fleisher of Sprague River, that means another year of uncertainty about water supplies and safety for them and their neighbors.

Gallagher’s two toddlers often tag along with him for farm chores, but he said the area isn’t safe anymore.

“I’d feel uncomfortable if my wife and kids came up here alone now,” said Gallagher, standing beside a fence he and Fleisher built on the grazing allotment. “It’s changed our way of life.”