A federal judge has blocked a Northern California county’s ban on trucks delivering water to Hmong cannabis farmers, saying it raises “serious questions” about racial discrimination and leaves the growers without a source of water for basic sanitation, vegetable gardens and livestock.
On Friday, Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly J. Mueller issued a temporary injunction against Siskiyou County’s prohibition on trucked-in water deliveries to Hmong farmers growing marijuana in the Mount Shasta Vista subdivision in the Big Springs area north of Weed.
“Without an injunction, the plaintiffs and other members of the Shasta Vista Hmong community will likely go without water for their basic needs and will likely lose more plants and livestock,” she wrote. “Fires may burn more homes. People may be forced to leave their homes and land behind without compensation.
Over the last five years, hundreds of Hmong farmers have bought cheap land in the subdivision and erected hundreds of marijuana greenhouses on the lava-rock covered hillsides in violation of the county’s ban on commercial cannabis cultivation.
Authorities estimate there are 5,000 to 6,000 greenhouses growing pot in the Big Springs area, with as many as 4,000 to 8,000 people tending them, most of them Hmong and immigrants of Chinese descent.
Most of the parcels have no wells on site, so water the Hmong purchase from nearby farmers’ agricultural wells is delivered by truck to the grow sites where swimming pools and large portable tanks supply the greenhouses.
The expansion of the greenhouses led to complaints that local residential wells were going dry. At the same time, county law enforcement officials cited a rise in violent crime as well as illegal pesticides and fertilizers, piles of trash and raw sewage spills at the grows.
This spring, citing the need to protect residential wells and cut off the supply to the illegal grows, the county approved ordinances that prohibit selling well water without permits as well as water trucks on the roads leading to the subdivision. Deputies were aggressively pulling over anyone suspected of hauling water.
‘Racial Animus at Play’?
The Hmong growers’ attorneys sued in federal court in Sacramento, alleging the ordinances were racially motivated and violated their civil rights.
Their attorneys alleged that by depriving the families tending the grows of water it choked off more than just the cannabis. The county also deprived those living in Shasta Vista of the means to bathe, tend vegetable gardens and keep their ducks, chickens and other livestock alive.
Mueller’s injunction Friday made it clear she believes the growers have a case to make that “the ordinances are motivated by racial animus” as their civil suit plays out. But the judge did leave in place a county ordinance that prohibits selling well water specifically for illegal cannabis cultivation. The injunction only covers water sales and deliveries for human needs such as bathing and gardening, said Allison Margolin, one of the attorneys for the Hmong.
Siskiyou County’s attorney, Edward Kiernan, didn’t immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday. In previous interviews, Siskiyou County…
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