A bill that would have increased the number of plants that microproducers are allowed to grow failed to gain traction last week, but lawmakers’ decision to omit water protections from the bill has led to the emergence of a discussion over water rights once again.
So in other words, getting a cannabis license for production is contingent on having valid water rights and the determination of whether your water right is valid has to be made by the state engineer.
The rationale for that language was to prevent illegal uses of water and also to have some accountability for the use of water related to cannabis production.
In rural communities, those are really important things to consider, because the smaller entities don’t have the capacity to enforce against illegal use.
Later on Pirtle added another amendment saying that a license could be revoked after the fact if it’s found that the water use was illegal.
We talked to a lot of our collaborators and partners, and we agreed that the Pirtle language was inadequate to make sure that a new producer has valid water rights upfront in the process.
We listened to testimony during the promulgation of regulations this past summer to implement the cannabis regulation and we did hear some of those concerns.
I think some of the difficulty that they’re facing has to do with some of the basic tenets of water law and not the CRA.
I think that having the state engineer involved in the process as the referee—at least making sure people have legal water rights—that’s one small step toward putting some fundamental building blocks in place for good water governance.
But we’re learning a lot about about the industry, and now we plan on listening to producers and trying to understand what kind of barriers people are facing because of this requirement.