Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title/Conference

Water

Volume

13

Issue

1

Publisher

MDPI AG

Publication Date

12-23-2020

Journal Article Version

Version of Record

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

First Page

1

Last Page

18

Abstract

Availability of water for irrigated crops is driven by climate and policy, as moderated by public priorities and opinions. We explore how climate and water policy interact to influence water availability for cannabis (Cannabis sativa), a newly regulated crop in California, as well as how public discourse frames these interactions. Grower access to surface water covaries with precipitation frequency and oscillates consistently in an energetic 11–17 year wet-dry cycle. Assessing contemporary cannabis water policies against historic streamflow data showed that legal surface water access was most reliable for cannabis growers with small water rights ( < 600 m3) and limited during relatively dry years. Climate variability either facilitates or limits water access in cycles of 10–15 years—rendering cultivators with larger water rights vulnerable to drought. However, news media coverage excludes growers' perspectives and rarely mentions climate and weather, while public debate over growers' irrigation water use presumes illegal diversion. This complicates efforts to improve growers' legal water access, which are further challenged by climate. To promote a socially, politically, and environmentally viable cannabis industry, water policy should better represent growers' voices and explicitly address stakeholder controversies as it adapts to this new and legal agricultural water user.

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