Sonoma County supervisors craft scope of cannabis impact study

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors began Tuesday to define the scope of a much anticipated study on the impacts of commercial cannabis cultivation, giving direction on comprehensive review meant to help underwrite changes to the county’s troubled cannabis ordinance.

Nearly every option remained on the table after the board’s lengthy hearing, except for a moratorium on permits for cannabis farmers, rejected by four supervisors.

The board gave feedback after about two hours of public comment Tuesday morning that highlighted the conflicts between growers and neighbors, the backlog of applications for cultivation permits and the general confusion that exists over county regulation of cannabis cultivation.

Neighbors say governance is too lax, while growers say it's hampered development of a local industry legalized by California voters five years ago.

“One of the reasons this conversation has become so tense and prone to hostility is the uncertainty,” Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins acknowledged Tuesday.

The hearing followed the county’s commitment in May to an environmental impact study evaluating the footprint and potential fallout of expanded cannabis operations outside city limits. That step alone stemmed from several years of local outcry and countywide deadlock involving growers and concerned residents.

The discord surfaced again Tuesday as residents, their attorneys, farmers and industry consultants accused each other of being in the minority and out of step on the issue.

“The cannabis industry people — they’ve treated us like garbage in our own neighborhoods and I think they thought they could get away with it,” said resident Daniel McCoy. “Now the people are awake.”

“It’s only fair cannabis businesses get a level playing field,” said Don Duncan, who works in the cannabis industry. “Bear in mind, cannabis businesses face an ongoing stigma from the public and from staff.”

Tuesday the board directed staff from Permit Sonoma, the county’s building and permitting department, to study the industry’s full supply chain from cultivation to packaging to retail, zoning options, water impact, the multi-tenant permit program currently on a 45-day freeze and the option of classifying cannabis growing as agriculture, which the current ordinance does not do.

David Rabbitt, the lone supervisor to favor a moratorium on applications as the study progresses, said that continuing to move applications through the problematic process would not help the county’s efforts to untangle its ordinance. But his fellow supervisors stressed that a moratorium would hurt the many farmers who applied for cultivation permits in good faith and are now languishing in the process.

Supervisors agreed to study expanding cannabis cultivation into a wider swath of county-governed land, including zones of mixed agricultural and rural residential (AR and RR, respectively). That direction came despite the controversy aroused by a similar proposal considered by the county a few years ago.

“Given that we are a rural county, while we’re in there it’s appropriate to at least do the analysis and do the study of what it might look at,” said Scott Orr, deputy director of the county’s planning division.

Currently, the county allows cultivation in areas that are rural and more strictly limited to agricultural uses.

Orr and other Permit Sonoma staff explained that instead of applying a one-size fits all approach to cultivation zoning, the county could evaluate parcels using a specific list of criteria. Doing so could mean that a few parcels in AR and RR would be suitable options for cannabis cultivation, they explained.

Throughout the discussion, the board and county staff were clear that including an option like AR and RR zoning in the impact study would not mean the county has to adopt it in its revised ordinance.

Many residents and even a few farmers balked at the prospect of revisiting AR and RR zoning.

David Drips, co-owner of Petaluma Hill Farms, a cannabis producer, urged the board not to look at those zones given the past controversy.

Drips said the county “murdered” the original location of his farm, which was in one of those zones, amid uproar over allowing cannabis cultivation in rural residential areas. Bringing the option back now would only spark more hostility, he said.

“Don’t bring AR and RR back to the table,” Drips said. “Leave it alone.”

Also opposed, many residents from Bennett Valley, Mill Creek and west county communities including Bloomfield said their neighborhoods, though rural, were not appropriate for cannabis cultivation.

They called for exclusion zones and minimum setbacks of 1,000 ft.

“We are not against cannabis. It just needs to be restricted to appropriate locations,” said Bennett valley resident Brantly Richardson.

Supervisor James Gore took issue with residents saying their rural neighborhoods should be excluded. Comparing them to residents claiming to support affordable housing while opposing it in their towns, Gore said living in an area zoned for agriculture means living with “the impacts of agriculture.”

“This has been an imperfect, relentless process,” said Gore. “We as supervisors — we need to get to a point where we make strong decisions based on the zoning.”

Rabbitt, who like Gore has drawn strong political support from farming interests, nevertheless signaled that outdoor cannabis cultivation and its impacts on rural neighborhoods ought to be considered differently.

Tuesday’s outpouring of comments, he said, would not have occurred if the county had done a better job crafting its regulations.

“We continued to pay the price of squeezing two years of work into eight months,” Rabbitt said.

County staff are expected to return to the board in about a month with further details about the impending impact study, including project costs, according to Permit Sonoma director Tennis Wick.

You can reach Staff Writer Emma Murphy at 707-521-5228 or emma.murphy@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MurphReports.