A California county cuts off water to Asian (Hmong) pot growers. Is it racism or crime crackdown?

[Demovictory9]

In the spring of this year, county supervisors effectively outlawed the transportation of water into a rural tract that had become known for its prolific cultivation of pot, squalid living conditions and large population of Hmong farmers.

The measure was just the latest attempt by local officials to shut down the pot farms, which authorities blamed for a spike in violent crime and environmental degradation.

This time however, as the Lava fire tore through the countryside, Siskiyou County’s crackdown would erupt in violence and draw national attention to a bitter conflict involving race, water and the legalization of marijuana. It would also cause a federal court judge to openly question the county’s motives for implementing such harsh measures, coming as they were at a time of severe drought, record heat and extreme risk of wildfires.

“The dehydration and de facto expulsion of a disfavored minority community cannot be the price paid in an effort to stop illegal cannabis cultivation and any attendant harms,” wrote Judge Kimberly J. Mueller of the Eastern District of California.

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But in 2015, Hmong growers began moving into the subdivision from Minneapolis, Milwaukee and Fresno — areas where the U.S. State Department resettled Hmong refugees whose collaboration with U.S. forces in the Vietnam War had marked them for persecution by the communists. This was also around the time that California voters passed Proposition 64, which legalized the recreational use of cannabis and reduced the penalty for growing and selling it from a felony to a misdemeanor.

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Today, some 1,000 Hmong live in the subdivision, but county officials complain that only 80 to 84 of the numerous structures there were erected with permits.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-10-26/weaponizing-california-water-against-illegal-pot-growers

picture of the mount shasta subdivision

[Amishman]

1. Are there other growers in the area getting different treatment?

They should not be immune to prosecution because of their ethnic status, but neither should they bet targeted because of it.

How other growers are being treated should answer which this is.

[msfiddlestix]

2. A lot of water required in a severe drought

and water diverted away from critical population needs.

it's a huge problem with both Big and Small Ag. Vineyards in the North Bay region engaged in under the radar Water Wars.

California. This is a thing about Water Rights exacerbated by severe drought is my first take.