Friday, November 21, 2014
You don't miss your water 'til your well runs dry
Nor do you put a real value on it until then. Now that California is gripped in a major drought, thieves have quickly found the real value of water and where to take it from.
They drive in the thick of night with a 1,000-gallon tank on the back of a pickup and go after the liquid gold wherever they can find it. Some have hit the same target twice in one night, filling up their tank, unloading it into storage and returning for a second fill-up.With only fnes and misdemeanor charges to stop them, water rustling will probably continue as long as the drought and probably make it worse in some areas.
Counties mostly in the more rural northern parts of California are reporting a surge in thefts and illegal diversions of water from wells and streams. The prime suspects are illegal marijuana farmers desperate for water before the fall harvest, which would explain the surge in water thievery over the summer.
“A lot of the wells have gone dry, and the marijuana growers have run out of water and have been illegally taking the water out of the creeks,” said Hank Weston, supervisor in Nevada County, an old mining center in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California’s northwest. (The county has been around longer than the state of Nevada next door.)
“They have broken into a school district holding tank and in the fire department’s holding tank,” Weston said. “Some of the water trucks are pulling up near rivers and dropping water hoses in and suctioning it out.”
All of which is illegal, of course, but does not usually amount to much more than fines and a misdemeanor — at least for now.
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