Cable television’s Weather Channel has joined the polarizing debate over marijuana on its website on this week, claiming that growing cannabis is a contributor to California’s current drought.

“Marijuana growing is a budding business in America as laws are relaxed on pot use in several states, but as California’s drought continues to worsen, these thirsty plants, whether grown lawfully or illegally, aren’t helping the problem,” says writer Sean Breslin.

Breslin claims that along California’s North Coast, thousands of marijuana plants require six gallons of water apiece every day, and it’s stressing the local water source.

And, according to Breslin, “as an already extensive drought likely gets even more dire this summer, marijuana farms are going to guzzle up a lot of the state’s water if dry, sunny conditions persist.”

Breslin also cites authorities, who says some who grow marijuana without following the rules and regulation have been caught stealing water from other farmers.

Breslin also cites claims by the fishing industry, which says that pesticides, fertilizers, and sediments from marijuana farms are leaking into waterways where they can affect salmon and other fish. In Humboldt County, fish farmers point out pot farmers for disrupting the local ecosystem and endangering the fish population.

However, readers of the Weather Channel’s Internet site Weather.com, aren’t buying Breslin’s arguments.

One reader retorts:

You really want to point the finger at cannabis for contributing to CA drought problems when practically every living green thing in the entire southern half of the state is landscaped in there and needs to be watered?!? Last I checked, all that grass and all those superficial shrubs people water daily with sprinklers serve no functional purpose whatsoever.

Another joins the fray:

Lettuce: Another Contributor to California’s Drought

Tomatoes: : Another Contributor to California’s Drought

Celery: Another Contributor to California’s Drought

Lawns: : Another Contributor to California’s Drought

Other readers say that the regions’s logging industry and the drought are the primary culprits wrecking the regional ecology.

– Read the entire article at AlterNet.