Planners: Cultivation at relative standstill
On Tuesday, the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors took a drones-eye view of the cannabis permitting program, finding that the number of farms is not close to the county cap.
The number of farms — caps are enacted based on nearby watersheds, but range from 19 to 650 permits allowed in a given area — is not expected to increase, said Humboldt County Planning and Building Director John Ford, noting his department is not seeing new applications for cannabis cultivation.
“Mostly what we're seeing come in are applications for either substantial conformance or a minor modification, where somebody is changing something about their existing permit,” said Ford, estimating that 1,413 fewer legal cultivation sites exist now compared with 2016.
Currently, there are no local watersheds with cannabis permits that exceed roughly half of the area's cap, with the lower Trinity River containing the greatest number of permitted farms at 55%. The average number of permits is 31% of an area's cap and 32% for the allowed acreage.
Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, whose district encompasses the county's historic grow sites, noted that given the cannabis industry's struggles and local downsizing, she was not
open to discussing lowering caps.
Of the 1,211 parcels targeted by code enforcement, 99 entered into a compliance agreement and 887 were completely abated.
“We're seeing industry attrition and from what I saw today, it's really resulting in minimal, if any, net growth of permits or area of cultivation. But meanwhile, what I'm starting to see, and I think what we assumed was coming is this, maybe avalanche is a little bit of a hyperbole, but quite a wave of abandoned sites and then permit revocations that we anticipate coming forward,” said 4th District Supervisor Natalie Arroyo.
Humboldt County suspended Measure S taxes during the zenith of industry struggles but recently voted to reimpose them at 10%, giving growers until March 2025 to pay. Ford said 538 permits owe money for Measure S or processing costs, all of which could see denial or revocation.
Fifth District Supervisor Steve Madrone said he believed the county has an opportunity to look at greater land-use policy revamping, rather than solely focusing on cannabis, citing the damage other forms of land usage, such as logging can create.
“I do believe that we could not only utilize an incentive program against back owed taxes, whereby let's say you put in storage in forbearance, or you do road measures to reduce erosion, or you convert to solar or wind rather than diesel generators, etc., then why not have a program where we allow people to write that expense off of their Measure S tax that is owed?” Madrone said.
The board will likely discuss the state of county cannabis permitting in April 2025 after the Measure S tax deadline passes.
Public comment saw several local cultivators call on the supervisors to support their industry, citing the lack of a “green rush.”
“Look at the numbers of where we were with cultivation, where we were with permits, those applied permits were people who are already cultivating, they're not there anymore. It's been cut in half, yet here we are talking again about this green rush which frankly doesn't exist. It's exhausting. We all need to get to work on our farms,” Dylan Mattole, a longtime local grower, said.