Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation challenges cannabis ordinance
The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation is in the midst of scheduling the mandatory settlement conference that must take place in all California Environmental Quality Act cases in relation to their lawsuit to challenge Yolo County’s Cannabis Land Use Ordinance.
The Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation partnered with the Yolo County Farm Bureau, Sierra Club and the citizen’s group Voices for Responsible Leadership in a lawsuit against Yolo County, the Yolo County Board of Supervisors and Yolo County Community Services.
On Sept. 14, following a lengthy deliberation process over the span of several years, supervisors unanimously approved and adopted the Cannabis Land Use Ordinance (CLUO) and certified the Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR) for the ordinance. One month later, on Oct. 14, the CLUO went into effect.
According to a press release from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation that was distributed the day the CLUO went into effect, the CLUO violates the California Environmental Quality Act and conflicts with the Williamson Act. The lawsuit is seeking to block implementation until its challenges are corrected.
Both the lawsuit and the press release emphasized that the tribe does not object to the legal cultivation of cannabis, nor does it seek to block county residents from profiting from the cannabis industry but rather takes issue with the final ordinance as written.
“The cannabis industry has a place in Yolo County, just as cannabis has a place in the medicine cabinets of many people in California,” the Tribal Council of the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation stated in the press release. “But sensible cannabis permit
ting can’t happen until the county is clear-eyed about the problems overconcentration creates, especially in sensitive areas around schools, near cultural heritage sites and in smaller communities like those in the Capay Valley.”
The current ordinance includes buffer zone requirements and a cap of 65 cannabis use permits, with five located within the Capay Valley and allows for 49 cultivation licenses.
The Capay Valley is currently home to a disproportionate amount of cannabis production operations, according to the press release. The lawsuit addresses concerns with overconcentration in smaller communities like the Capay Valley, citing odor, crime and environmental impacts as potential problems. The EIR failed to address the relocation of cannabis land uses to smaller, rural communities like Esparto and Madison, the lawsuit states.
According to the court documents, petitioners from the Yocha Dehe Wintun Nation and the Farm Bureau informed supervisors about the environmental, health and public safety concerns they had concerning the CLUO and the EIR. During workshops held by the Yolo County Planning Commission in late 2020, a commissioner asked if all of Yocha Dehe’s concerns had been addressed.
“The county’s contract planner responded, falsely, that all of Yocha Dehe’s concerns had been addressed,” the documents stated.
The lawsuit argues that the environmental work done by the county was insufficient and claims the final version of the CLUO was not subject to public review.
“Yolo County has filed an answer to this request for relief by the coalition, but the answer was deficient and so needs to be amended,” explained Ben Deci, the tribe’s public information officer, about the current state of the lawsuit. “I am unaware of where the county is on filing that amended answer.”
Yolo County Public Information Officer John Fout stated that the county “filed the amended answer on December 2, and we expect the lawsuit will be decided in mid-2022. We do not have any other comments.”
There is no definitive date yet for when the settlement conference will take place, but Deci said he anticipates it happening sometime in the upcoming week.