Fifty-Acre Cannabis Operation Gets Green Light in Wine Country

The Santa Barbara Independent reports… Vintners’ Pleas Again Fail to Sway Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors

The largest cannabis operation to come before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors — 50 acres of cultivation at the gateway to the fabled Sta. Rita Hills, a federally designated wine-grape-growing region — was approved for a zoning permit in a contentious 3-2 vote on Tuesday.

Santa Barbara West Coast Farms LLC, located on 73 acres on Highway 246, a mile west of Buellton, was before the board on appeal. The county Planning Commission turned down the project in December, saying the proposed area for cannabis cultivation and processing covered too much of the property and would generate “skunky” smells. The commission found that the operation would create conflicts with vintners and other “legacy agriculture,” partly because of the potential for “pesticide drift” onto the lucrative cannabis crop.

But Supervisor Steve Lavagnino, who represents the Santa Maria Valley, wasn’t having any of it. He said Tuesday that to deny West Coast Farms would effectively be to ban all outdoor cannabis cultivation in the Santa Rita Hills.

“Everybody says this is the wrong place,” Lavagnino said. “That seems to be the argument every time cannabis comes up. It’s easy to tell people to go somewhere else.”

If the board wasn’t going to approve the West Coast Farms cannabis operation, Lavagnino said, “I guess we go out into the Los Padres National Forest to do it illegally because there’s nowhere else for them to go.”

It was the second cannabis project to be approved by the board on Highway 246 in just over a month. On March 17, the board voted 4-0 to allow 22 acres of outdoor cannabis cultivation, including five acres in hoop houses, on 62 acres at Busy Bee Organics, just half a mile east of West Coast Farms. In all, county planners said, 625 acres of cannabis cultivation are proposed in the Santa Rita Hills, an area seven miles long and three miles wide between the Santa Rosa and La Purisima hills.

Lavagnino said he viewed cannabis as the county’s “one reliable source of income.” The county estimates it will collect $9 million in cannabis taxes this fiscal year, a third of which will be spent on planning and enforcement. The county’s annual budget is about $1 billion.

Read full story at    https://www.independent.com/2020/04/22/fifty-acre-cannabis-operation-gets-green-light-in-wine-country/

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