Rows of cannabis plants from an illegal grow, found by Jackson County Sheriffs in August 2022.
Courtesy of Jackson County Sheriff's Office
State funding from last year has helped combat illicit cannabis grows in Southern Oregon. That includes enforcement of illegal water use by the Oregon Water Resources Department.
Scott Prose, assistant watermaster for the department’s southwest region, spoke to the Jackson County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday. He said there has been a drop in water violations on cannabis grows this year.
“The education, the work you guys have done, just code enforcement, just the collaboration, all of that is adding up in my opinion to a pretty big decrease, which is great,” Prose said.
So far, Prose’s department has visited 146 cannabis sites in Jackson County. Thirty one of those were found to be in violation of water laws. Prose said the drop is most significant among legal cannabis growers, which he attributed to better education.
State allocation of funds ‘was not done fairly,’ county says
But, Jackson County Administrator Danny Jordan said he’s frustrated with the allocation of state funding to combat illegal marijuana. He said last year, other counties tried to get their share of the state’s one-time grants for law enforcement.
“And so a lot of the funding that was supposed to be focused here for us ended up not coming here, it went to other places,” he said. “Where we’re having, you know, 146 cannabis sites, they have five and the allocation of funds to me was not done fairly based on the workload.”
Because of that, Jordan said the county hasn’t been able to focus as many law enforcement resources as they’d like to. According to the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, which manages the funding, Jackson County received around $10 million from the Illegal Marijuana Market Enforcement Grant program last year, around $7.5 million of that came in as one-time funds.
Related: Oregon to crack down on illegal cannabis growers by holding landowners responsible
The state Water Resources Department said it has one of the highest levels of collaboration with law enforcement in Jackson County.
The department works with local law enforcement, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and county code enforcement teams. These partnerships help with getting access to property and sharing local insights on cannabis grows.
This year, the Water Resources Department required marijuana producers to submit a form showing how and where they planned to get water.
Prose said that’s helped to stop water violations before they happen. The additional staff the department has received through a $5 million state appropriation in 2021 enabled the department to process those applications, Prose said.