The Santa Barbara County Planning Commission voted 4-0 (with 5th District Commissioner Vincent Martinez absent) during its May 8 meeting to push its decision on a cannabis cultivation project near Buellton to July 10 so the project could further analyze odor, viewshed, and other environmental impacts.
“I’m very cognizant, because I’ve been in the middle of it, of the agricultural enterprise ordinance, the recreation master plan, and our encouragement of agricultural tourism—farm stays and campgrounds and other things that don’t exist right now, but we’re trying to encourage them,” said 3rd District Commissioner John Parke. “Where they are located in relation to cannabis, so I’m very concerned about this becoming a cannabis corridor.”
Thomas and Tami Kopitnik submitted their application to the county in 2021 for a land use permit for Tat Ventures LLC, a 3.83-acre outdoor cannabis cultivation operation, which would be grown in pots under non-electrified hoop houses with no permanent structures, according to the staff report. The Kopitnik’s ranch is 360 acres total, divided into a main ranch, backcountry area, and the grow field, said Kristin Larson, an attorney representing the couple.
Santa Barbara County Planner Willow Brown told commissioners that the project met all of the county’s environmental and viewshed requirements—with plans to plant native vegetation to shield the hoop tunnels from view, no concerns with animal impacts, and 75 percent less water use than previous agricultural operations. However, Parke had lingering concerns about odor abatement and water absorption of runoff from hoop houses and their viewshed impacts.
“Anybody who’s been alive in the last two years realized we have episodic rains here, and I know we’ve had an incident of hoop houses being destroyed in floods and causing floods and so forth,” he said. “I’m going to want a better answer to the question, to tell you the truth, than, ‘It should be absorbed by surrounding soil.’”
The project sits in Parke’s district, who said that odor issues for outdoor grows has been a “sensitive issue” for constituents and for 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann. While this project doesn’t need an odor abatement plan because of its zoning, Parke said that he would like to see the commission use its discretion to look into the odor’s impact on neighbors.
“I’ll be up-front, if we had to vote today I would vote to reject the project because I don’t think we can make the finding, … and I’m basing that on what I heard today and I’ve heard over the years—where I’ve heard every single other cannabis project and what they claim will happen and won’t happen,” Parke said. “There are scents that come from the growth of it.”
While 4th District Commissioner Roy Reed doesn’t like seeing hoop houses either, he said they are “a reasonable part of agriculture” and can increase potential for raising certain crops.
“I wonder if these hoop houses were used for caneberries, blueberries, if the objections would be similarly great with respect to drainage from hoop houses. In the Santa Maria Valley we have thousands of acres of hoop houses, but yet during the rainy season we have not yet been washed into the sea,” Reed said.
He added that he can appreciate the odor impact concerns, but he said that odor is a very subjective issue and people will complain to “any degree of odor.”
“I think many objections can be overcome, but with regard to the odor element, when the county has created a very rigorous ordinance that requires applicants a great deal of time and expense when we are faced with a project that seems to rise to that level, we have an obligation to move and approve,” Reed said. “Since this is in Commissioner Parke’s district, … while I would never support a motion to reject, I could be agreeable to supporting a motion to extend and revisit this at a later time.”
This article appears in May 23 – Jun 2, 2024.