Hello Board of Supervisors,
Much appreciation and support for taking a slower and more thoughtful move into Phase 3 with this proposed moratorium.
The world of cannabis is changing. Mendocino may need to 'Go Large To Go Cheap' at some point, but the planning department and Mendocino population is not yet ready for large farms solely to create bargain basement discount product. Mendocino County is not a bargain basement county. Mendocino County is beautiful and fiercely independent! We need to defend both that beauty and fierce independent nature!
I urge the board to eschew the 10% concept. We've all heard from a majority of the population that the comfort level seems to be no more than 5% with a one acre cap across all zoning types, including Rangeland. Is it an emotional response rather than a technical or scientific reasoning? Perhaps. Perhaps not. What we do know is that stories are coming out about bad acting licensees. Until these bad actors are able to control their actions, or until the Planning Department is funded sufficiently to be able to follow up on such complaints, it would be a smart idea to slow the expansion until the public can be made aware that such behavior is being monitored.
Before even expanding to 5% with a one acre cap, it is incredibly important that the Board increase funding for Planners and Planning software to process, on-board and visit current farms to actually see what is going on and resolve any perception that there is 'bad-acting' going on. As a public service, this work needs funding beyond just permit fees. Consider using a portion of cannabis minimum tax fees to boost the planning departments abilities for the next couple of years. Allow the lower growth rate until the county and water experts can confirm the impact of that smaller cap on water supplies. At this point, the Board of Supervisors will have a basis from which to expand the cap. Expand with funding and knowledge, not just hopes.
As you make your considerations, consider that the main transportation avenues through Mendocino County, our highways, convey the beauty of Mendocino - as well as some of the destitution. Our wide open meadows speckled with cows and elk along those corridors 'wash away' the blight found on other parts of the corridors. I urge the Board to include in the ordinance protections for those wide open meadows such that plants might be visible, but not fields of plastic or hoops where the public might see them. Preserve that meadow *feeling* by requiring hoops be placed behind tree-cover or minimized with tan fencing around them such that the feeling of meadow is continued. Or, require open-plant farming, without hoops within eyesight on corridors frequently traveled by the public.
Lastly, small farms tucked into their traditional space in the hills and byways of Northern Mendocino are able to employ neighbors who otherwise would have to leave their homes and move to an already housing-tight city. Keep hill dwellers in the hills and gainfully employed by small, eco-conscious legal businesses. Pulling small business employment out of their traditional dispersed areas and into concentrated nodes creates more unemployment in the hills, an already challenged economic area and futher stresses the housing around those nodes.
Applicants who are unable for whatever reason to surmount the Phase 1 licensing hurdles, need to be invited wholeheartedly and without exception to Phase 3 where AP's and UP's both major or minor will be able to mitigate whatever hurdle blocked their path. 'Without exception' is the important part. Let the AP/UP process mitigate, alter and otherwise handle whatever circumstances blocked those Phase 1 applicants, be it that they grew under trees and were unable to provide a suitable prior, or were taken advantage of by a land speculator subdividing their parcel after Jan 1, 2016, among other Phase 1 hurdles that should no longer matter.
Allow small farms to economically support Mendocino County by:
• avoiding the perception of bargain basement product with a one acre cap,
• making it possible for the Planning Department to effectively do their job with sufficient funding,
• keep meadows along major travel corridors naturally appealing,
• encourage local employment even in remote locations (not just towns), and
• enable small farmers who were blocked by no-longer-relevant Phase 1 regulations to apply to Phase 3 without exception.
Let's work together to help Mendocino County bloom,
Heidi Wordhouse
Jackrabbit Ranch

Monday March 21, 2021

Mendocino board of supervisors
501 Low Gap Road
Ukiah CA 95482
Submitted by ecomment

Re: Proposed Phase 3 Commercial Cannabis Land Use Ordinance

Dear Supervisors,

Friends of the Eel River respectfully joins the environmental community of Mendocino County in urging you to find a better course for the future of commercial cannabis and healthy watersheds. If there is any urgency here it is of the Board’s own making.

As Ms. Doughty has eloquently explained to you in her comments on behalf of the Willits Environmental Center, “in its apparent short sighted haste and to avoid investing in an appropriate environmental analysis at the front end,” the County is moving to a system that will create impossible burdens for small operators, county staff, regulators and law enforcement. FOER shares the WEC’s grave concerns about the increase in environmental impacts the proposed ordinance will cause and supports their comments to your Board.

The Mendocino County Board of Supervisors has previously acknowledged the serious impact of unregulated cannabis production across the county, including the critical impacts that development can have on watercourses and the salmon which they support. Take, for example, Tomki Creek on the mainstem Eel River, which reliably supported hundreds and thousands of spawning salmon every year. Chinook returns to Tomki Creek declined abruptly in 1989. They have never recovered.

Mendocino County is responsible for protecting – and for failing to protect -- Tomki Creek as habitat for its native salmon. Bringing them back means fixing a lot of things (roads, stream crossings, grading and so forth) which the County has knowingly failed to address for decades. Encouraging a new wave of development into remote areas is the last thing responsible regulators would do.

As many commenters have pointed out, Mendocino County is completely failing to do even basic enforcement on unpermitted cultivation today. The proposed ordinance offers nothing to suggest that this will change. Rather, the idea appears to be to shirk the county’s burden of enforcement and of meaningful environmental review as much as possible. In practice, this will place substantial additional burdens on the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s already overstretched permitting and enforcement capacities.

But state budgeting documents show that CDFW already lacks the resources to carry even 30% of the agency’s current permitting workload, while two-thirds of its law enforcement responsibilities go unmet. Meanwhile, the agency’s critical work to protect species and conserve habitat has barely a quarter of what it needs to do its job. This is the agency Mendocino County wants to pretend will be there to clean up when the county fails to plan and direct land use to prevent lasting environmental harms.

More to the point, DFW is not a land use agency. It is the county’s responsibility to plan for, direct, and regulate land use so that it will not unnecessarily create a significant impact on our natural heritage. As WEC points out, it is the county, its citizens, and its environment that will be left holding the bag when the piper comes.

Perhaps the most pervasive misunderstanding of the nature of the watershed impacts of widespread commercial cannabis cultivation on salmon and steelhead is the relative significance of sedimentation versus water withdrawals and pollution. Our best rough estimate remains that sediment impacts account for about 90% of the harms to salmonids in the Eel River watershed from pot production, while water withdrawals are maybe 9% and pollution the remaining 1%. Thus, reducing and preventing cumulative sediment impacts from roads, stream crossings, and grading are a critical element of preventing harms to critically imperiled Eel River salmon and steelhead.

To provide for a sustainable cannabis industry in Mendocino County, the board should limit future development to operations serviced by county-maintained roads. As well, we implore the county to absolutely ban the use of hauled water for any use associated with a commercial cannabis operation. FOER strongly agrees with WEC and others who oppose the 10% ceiling as inviting otherwise unsustainable and undesirable development.

Any use of surface water should comply with forbearance rules under state regulations. FOER strongly encourages Mendocino County to impose the same seasonal storage and forbearance requirements on well users.

The flimsy structure the county proposes is one the wealthy and politically powerful will find convenient to their needs. But it will be a trainwreck for everyone else, including the county’s citizens and, we fear, its ecosystems. It is hard to square the proposed ordinance with the board’s duty to provide for the health and general welfare of county or of its natural resources.

Sincerely,

Scott Greacen
Conservation Director
Friends of the Eel River

Honored Supervisors,
I would like to ask you to delay or deny your approval for the massive expansion of acreage for cannabis cultivation, which would approve 10% of an owner’s land in certain zones of land. This expansion is under scrutiny right now by the Planning Commission, and it is my understanding that there is pressure on you to approve it as soon as possible as part of the Phase 3 opening of the County for non-legacy permits under our Cannabis Ordinance. It is my opinion that this expansion is an unpopular idea and would have such far reaching effects on our communities and economy that it should be put before the voters as a Measure to vote on, rather than just the Board deciding it for us. Please open Phase 3 without this gross expansion.
My name is Tekla Broz. I am a retired elementary school teacher, who has taught and lived in Covelo for over 30 years. I currently have a State provisional license and County permit for cultivating Cottage Tier I (2,500 sq. ft.) outdoor, organic cannabis.
As a cultivator, and as a community member I have many reasons for my opposition to this massive expansion. This explosive expansion is an environmentally, economically, socially and criminally unsound idea.
It is environmentally unsound, as water is at a premium in our county because we are in the midst of climate change inflicted drought, with the resulting risk of massive fire danger and drought risk to existing crops. Trash from larger grows is already a problem for the County, in collecting, hauling, disposing and because of abandoned and dumped trash. To expand cultivation without addressing the trash disposal problem would be unwise.
It is economically unsound, because a massive increase in the amount of cannabis produced in the County will only add to the current flood that is clogging our markets. We can only sell within the State at the moment. More cannabis is being produced (legally) than the market wants, and the prices are diving. When the state and international borders open up, as they inevitably will, we will all benefit, but by then it will be too late for most of the small legacy farmers, who will have been forced out of business, if you pass this unwise expansion.
The expansion would be socially unsound, because many of our rural, small communities and businesses depend on the presence of legal, local small growers in their schools, as invested community members working for the good of the community, and as workers paying into the local tax base. Larger grows, managed from a distance, would reduce the local populations of these small towns.
Such a large increase, (the current cap is at 10,000 sq. ft, which would change to an unknown upper figure, certainly in the tens of acres, and with no word on how many such permits will be allowed, or timeline to end this expansion) would be unsound in its effect on criminal justice. How would the County ensure the safety of these larger grows from marauding invasion burgleries, theft and vandalism when those are already happening at an unacceptable rate to the smaller growers? How will the County enforce the prohibition of illegal growing on this scale, which is already occurring and needs to be addressed? It seems that the ridiculously large illegal growing needs to be addressed before we try making legal grows to this scale. Are the County and State planning to elevate the numbers of law enforcement to our remote areas? Covelo already suffers in general from not enough sheriff and CHP presence.
As you can see, there are many reasons why this precipitous expansion is ill-advised. Many, many residents who are not growers are opposed to it. Round Valley Municipal Advisory Council, Laytonville Municipal Advisory Council, Willits Environmental Group, Covelo Cannabis Advocacy Group and multiple community members, including some from Round Valley Tribes, are opposed to this expansion. Why are you rushing this through?
Please put the expansion idea to the voters to express their opinions. You are receiving multiple petitions against it, but they cannot be verified in the same way that a County wide election would be.
Please pass the Phase 3 section of the ordinance without this ill-considered, hasty, exponential expansion of acreage allowed. If you must expand, cap it at 22,000 sq ft for now, and see how that goes. Err on the side of caution, rather than opening the floodgates and then regretting it.
Thank you for your attention to this long letter. I would appreciate a response from each of you, either to acknowledge that you have read it, or to express your opinion about it. So often, I have spoken to you in person, only to be ignored. Please let me know you are not ignoring me, and the many people who feel as I do.
Sincerely, Tekla Broz

I wish the Moratorium could be permanent. Just received an ad from a Hopland realtor saying rural land values have sky-rocketed millions of dollars within the past 45 days. Many out-of-state speculators are among those betting on an easy permitting process here so they can deplete our water and natural resources and make a fortune. Please STOP this disastrous rush towards further degradation of our beautifully rural county and KEEP THE MONEY-HUNGRY, LAND-GRABBING CARPET-BAGGERS OUT!