Gone to stinking pot
California flower town wrestles with odour amid shift to marijuana crops
CARPINTERIA, CALIF. Located almost 140 kilometres from Los Angeles, the picturesque coastal town of Carpinteria is located at the bottom of Santa Barbara County, a tourist area famous for its beaches, wine and temperate climate.
But change is in the air. And sometimes, residents say, it stinks.
Locals point out that thick, skunk-like odour from the marijuana plants settles over the valley in the evenings and before dawn. To keep out the stench, they have tried stuffing pillows under doors, lighting incense and shutting windows.
“We don’t want a marijuana smell,” said Xave Saragosa, a 73-year-old retired sheriff ’s deputy who was born and raised in the town and lives near a greenhouse that grows marijuana. “We want fresh air.”
Saragosa said the odour pervades his hillside home at night and keeps his wife up coughing.
Carpinteria is becoming known as a haven for cannabis growers. That’s because marijuana has become a new crop of choice in the farmlands surrounding this tightknit community of 14,000, which has long helped fuel the U.S. cut flower industry.
The county amassed the largest number of marijuana cultivation licences in California since broad legalization arrived on Jan. 1 — about 800, according to state data compiled by The Associated Press. Two-thirds of them are in Carpinteria and Lompoc, a larger agricultural city about an hour’s drive to the northwest.
Virtually all of Carpinteria’s licences are for small, “mixed-light” facilities, which essentially means greenhouses.
The result is a large number of licences but small total acreage. Only about 200 acres (81 hectares) of the county’s farmland is devoted to marijuana, compared with tens of thousands sown with strawberries and vegetables, said Dennis Bozanich, who oversees the county’s marijuana planning.
The area’s greenhouses have their roots in Carpinteria’s cut flower industry, which was sapped after the U.S. government granted trade preferences to South American countries in the 1990s to encourage their farmers to grow flowers instead of coca, the plant used to make cocaine.
In an ironic twist, some California flower growers weary of import competition have started trying to grow cannabis, a plant that, like coca, is deemed illicit by the federal government.
Others have sold their greenhouses to marijuana investors. Greenhouses that once produced flowers are seen as ideal for marijuana. In Carpinteria’s climate, the greenhouses heat and cool easily and inexpensively, and the plants thrive. It takes only about three months to grow cannabis in pots of shredded coconut husks, so farmers can get multiple harvests each year.
Some residents said the stench has decreased in recent months as some growers installed systems aimed at reducing the smells. Others said the problem persists.
The county passed rules in February requiring growers to submit odour-abatement plans and designate a representative to handle complaints. They are expected to take effect in some county areas this year and in Carpinteria following a review by state coastal regulators.