Groups sue over contentious pot grow
The Northcoast Environmental Center and Citizens for a Sustainable Humboldt filed a lawsuit in Humboldt County Superior Court last week in opposition to the 8.5acre Rolling Meadow Ranch cannabis project near the remote community of McCann in Southern Humboldt.
The environmental group asserts that the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ March 9 approval of the project does not comply with the California Environmental Quality Act.
“After much consideration of this outsized project’s ramifications for the environment and our community, (Citizens for a Sustainable Humboldt), NEC and a neighbor of the project seek to compel preparation of an EIR that will fully analyze and disclose the project’s impacts and proposed feasible mitigation and will consider alternative designs that can avoid or reduce the project’s impacts,” according to the joint press statement.
Larry Glass, executive director and board president of the NEC, said the review of the project falls short of exploring potential environmental impacts.
“The NEC has always asked for the highest level of environmental documentation before ever approving permits and we feel that a mitigated negative declaration as this one had fallen short of exploring all of the environmental repercussions that this project could have,” Glass told the Times
Standard on Monday afternoon. “We support the little mom-and-pop growers that have a light footprint on the environment. This is a massive grow right alongside a river and in golden eagle habitat.”
The Rolling Meadow Ranch project consists of six conditional use permits for 5.73 acres of mixed-light cultivation, including 16 greenhouses, five processing facilities, onsite water treatment systems and has an overall footprint of 8.5 acres.
“This project is out of the area people coming in and setting up shop on virgin land that wasn’t being used for growing previously. We’ve since found out that not only is this project happening but there’s also a timber harvest plan scheduled for the same exact parcel that was never brought out in any of the hearings,” Glass said.
During the supervisors’ March 9 meeting, Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford said significant impacts must be factually based.
“When it comes to fair argument, it’s not that the staff
is attempting to put the unfair burden on the (property owner) to demonstrate that there is a significant adverse impact,” Ford said. “What we’ve been trying to say is that you can’t have proof of a significant adverse impact because a lot of people are opposed to a project, it has to be factually based.”
The environmental groups argue that “the cumulative impacts of the project, in combination with other projects, including impacts to groundwater resources, biological resources, and wildfire risk, were not adequately analyzed.”
“The county’s failure to follow CEQA and local land use regulations with respect to the Rolling Meadow Ranch Project are part of a larger pattern and practice,” the statement said. “Other industrial-size cannabis projects have been approved with wells without investigation of their hydrological connectivity, exploitation of the ‘prime agricultural’ loophole and inadequate road access.”
Supervisors will discuss the litigation during closed session on Tuesday.