Cannabis grower sues New Mexico, alleging state employee flooded farm with E. coli-laced acequia water

A cannabis grower is accusing a state of New Mexico employee of destroying its plants by accidentally flooding them with E. coli-tainted water via a centuries-old irrigation canal in a lawsuit filed last month.

Albuquerque Cannabis Corp. is requesting $442,000 in damages from the state after a supervisor at Los Luceros Historic Site in Rio Arriba County allegedly left the gate open to an acequia during irrigation in August 2023, allowing more than 650,000 gallons of water to flood the company’s adjacent property, destroying 850 cannabis plants and four greenhouses’ worth of equipment.

The company leased a four-acre property next door to Los Luceros, a 19th-century hacienda with a historic irrigated pasture on the Rio Grande, open to the public for visits and managed by the state. The alleged flooding culprit was an acequia, a waterway used for irrigation built in the 18th century by Spanish colonists.

In the lawsuit, filed at the end of August, ACC claimed the flooding, which lasted for “several hours,” drenched its cultivation site, destroying greenhouse machinery and an estimated 400 pounds of cannabis flower and additional trim. The company alleges the plants were scheduled to enter the flowering stage — when they become fruitful — on the day of the flood.

“I think he just forgot and went home for lunch or whatever, and left it open for hours,” said Derek Watts, one of ACC’s four co-owners.

Watts said the company dissolved in the aftermath of the flood.

“Since this happened, the whole project — basically, just the wheels kind of fell off. We didn’t have any dollars to keep going. Everybody sort of pulled the plug,” he said.

In the lawsuit, ACC said it did not become aware of the full extent of the damage until lab testing confirmed the plants had been “inundated with fecal bacteria,” rendering them unsafe for sale.

“Because it’s a high input crop, all the investment goes into the plants, and then you get it all back at the end of the year, when you harvest,” Watts said. “And when the flood hit, it basically just wiped out all those resources, all the investment in the company as a whole.”

The property is located near a dirt road in Alcalde, about a third of a mile from Los Luceros and less than 500 feet away from the acequia, the oldest one east of the Rio Grande, according to a 2017 story in El Palacio Magazine.

“It definitely adds some humidity to the area and some lushness,” Watts said of the irrigation ditch. “I’m sort of a history buff, so it was cool to learn a little bit about the history of that network.”

Though the state and its staff are generally immune from civil suits under the New Mexico Tort Claims Act, the law makes an exception for damage caused by the negligence of public employees working in operations or maintenance at state facilities.

A spokesperson for the state’s Risk Management Division declined to comment on the pending litigation.

ACC was issued a commercial license to grow marijuana by the state Cannabis Control Division in 2022, though the license is no longer valid, according to New Mexico Regulation and Licensing spokesperson Andrea Brown.

“I guess it makes the headlines because it’s a cannabis thing, but it could have just as easily been any other kind of thing,” Watts said. “It’s just a neighbor flooding a neighbor, ruining what they had going on.”