Santa Barbara County’s cannabis odor ordinance needs to include a time element, according to 3rd District Planning Commissioner John Parke.
“Measuring your [odor] at 10 a.m. for an event that occurred at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. is just meaningless,” Parke said during the Jan. 29 county Planning Commission meeting. “It’s not going to be effective.”
He made those comments during a hearing on proposed amendments to the current cannabis odor ordinance, which will go back before the commission on Feb. 19 and head to the Board of Supervisors in mid-March for a final decision. While the changes aim to specifically address odor issues that persist with greenhouse cultivation in Carpinteria, the amendments will target all indoor growing and processing operations in the county.
Parke’s questions about timeliness referred to complaints from Carpinteria residents who say they get woken up by the smell in the middle of the night. They can’t file their complaint with the county until 9 a.m., Parke said, and then maybe someone will be out there to test for odor around noon.
“We have to reverse engineer what it would mean to have the ability to react on a real-time basis,” he said.
The problem with measuring odor at a different time than when it was first detected is that the air mixes and changes, according to Hamish Corbett-Hains with county consultant Geosyntec.
“You lose confidence in that measurement. It becomes less certain where those emissions are coming from, and it becomes less certain what you’re smelling,” he said.
The proposed amendments would set a threshold for cannabis odor at the grower’s property line, set up a complaint system that would trigger a tiered compliance response for operators, require runtime meters on electrical equipment, and require operators to provide data to the county when requested.
The commission discussed those changes last September and November. And the Board of Supervisors added to the list in January with new directives, including requiring operators to use multi-technology carbon filters or an equivalent technology to scrub odors, implementing a 12-month compliance period, and allowing changes to existing odor abatement plans.
What exactly that odor threshold should be is still an issue for the commission, which has plans to discuss it further on Feb. 19. Staff recommends 7 D/T—dilution over threshold—measured with a device called a Nasal Ranger at the property line of a cannabis operation for a three-minute period.
Fourth District Commissioner Roy Reed said he initially had concerns about the Nasal Ranger, but after looking further into it, he thinks “it’s acceptable.” It’s a device that’s placed over the nose and measures odor as the wearer—who’s certified to use it—breathes in.
“We can’t let perfect be the enemy of the good, and I think it’s good enough,” Reed said. “I don’t think neighbors in Carpinteria are satisfied with intermittent odor at property line. … I think they want no odor at lot line.”
County staff explained 7 D/T is an intermittent odor that isn’t consistent. Anything higher than that would be classified as a persistent odor. Anything lower than that would be an odor that’s even more diluted in the air. For instance, 4 D/T is below the nuisance threshold, Corbett-Hains said, adding that achieving an odor level of zero would be impossible, even with brand new greenhouses with the best equipment.
Another issue for commissioners was defining “multi-technology carbon filters,” something Parke said was a new term to him. County Planning and Development Director Lisa Plowman said that was a term coined by the Board of Supervisors and intended to include many different odor-controlling technologies. It’s meant to encompass carbon filters, photocatalytic oxidation (aka infinity scrubbers), and other best available odor control technologies.
“This isn’t prescriptive,” she said. “We will attempt to define what this is … make it broad enough that we are not penalizing some of the system growers that were early adopters.”
The commission is expected to decide on final recommendations for odor ordinance amendments during its Feb. 19 meeting.
This article appears in Feb 6-16, 2025.