Pubdate: Thu, 13 Feb 2014 Source: Prince George Citizen (CN BC) Copyright: 2014 Prince George Citizen Contact: http://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/350 Author: Charelle Evelyn REGIONAL DISTRICT NOT ALONE ZONING IN ON POT This afternoon, the Regional District of Fraser-Fort George board of directors will pass or defeat a bylaw limiting new medical marijuana grow sites to big rural properties. Under the federal government's new Marijuana for Medical Purposes Regulation effective April 1, production facilities licensed by Health Canada would be allowed in the same areas as other intensive agricultural uses and kept out of areas zoned as residential. Last month, board members passed the first two readings of a new bylaw to limit these grow operations to rural parcels of 16 hectares or larger on land zoned as M5 Agriculture Industry. The most-recent municipality to tackle the issue was Canada's capital city. On Tuesday, the city of Ottawa's planning committee voted 8-1 to add medical marijuana facilities as a permitted use in both rural and non-rural general industrial and heavy industrial zones. Language, which still has be approved by their city council as a whole, will expressly prohibit these facilities from being defined as an "agricultural use" in their zoning bylaw. "Ottawa's a unique place because we have greenbelts, which is a big part of it, and we only have so much agricultural land remaining [despite large rural area]," said Ottawa Coun. Tim Tierney, who sits on the city's planning committee. "So I think that's why they really focused on the commercial industrial land use areas at this point. It's more about the protection of a lot of these lands." The cities of Toronto and Brampton, Ont., are also placing these facilities in industrial zones. Prince George has yet to tackle the medical marijuana land use issue. Ottawa stipulated the need for these facilities to have a 150-metre setback from other residential and institutional zones. In the local regional district, a 60-metre rear and side set back and a 30-metre front set back have been proposed. In B.C., the Agricultural Land Commission has given these facilities the OK. "If a land owner is lawfully sanctioned to produce marijuana for medical purposes, the farming of said plant in the Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) is permitted and would be interpreted by the Agricultural Land Commission as being consistent with the definition of 'farm use' under the ALC Act," said an information bulletin. Despite that sanction, some communities have also gone the route of keeping medical marijuana production facilities out of agricultural areas through their zoning bylaws. The Lower Mainland Local Government Association forwarded a resolution to the Union of B.C. Municipalities last summer pushing for changes to the Assessment Act so that land used for the growth of medical marijuana couldn't be classified as a farm use and that farmland in general not be used for the growth of medical marijuana. The City of White Rock put forward placing the use of the federally licenced grow operations in a special commercial service use zone, which accommodates the facilities as a standalone use in an an existing commercial area. Potential applicants would have to apply for site-specific zoning amendments. Surrey council amended their zoning bylaw to specifically exclude the growing of medical pot from the definition of "horticulture" early last year. Mayors from Langley, Delta, Abbotsford and Kelowna wrote to the provincial agricultural minister to ask for a prohibition on grow ops in agricultural areas. Some have gone so far as to rejig their zoning bylaws to ban sites growing weed for medicinal purposes outright. The City of Richmond adopted a bylaw in mid-December that excluded medical marijuana production and research and development facilities not only from being classed as farm business, but also from being a permitted use in any zoning category. That wasn't the way Ottawa went, said Tierney, though the topic was broached. "That discussion did come up [Tuesday]," he said. "Obviously there's probably some opportunity to be able to make money off of these as a city as well." The federal regulations restrict facilities from being inside a residential dwelling and limit production, packaging and labeling to being done indoors at the producer's site. Cannabis can only be stored indoors on site and can only be destroyed by legislated methods that don't result in anyone being exposed to smoke. The site's perimeter must be secured against intruders with physical barriers monitored by visual recording devices. Even with those in place, there are still a lot of uncertainties as to what exactly these facilities will look like, said Tierney. "Is it going to look like Guantanamo Bay or something with big fences and barbed wire along the top or is this something that can be tucked into the community within an industrial park?" The real test will come when an applicant to Health Canada for such a facility actually receives a licence and goes about trying to set up shop. "That's where we're going to really see people being more vocal about what the aesthetics are going to look like. What's traffic going to be like?" Tierney said. "And that's a lot of the questions I had. It's one thing to think 'oh great, they might put something out there' but it's another thing about how's it going to actually function." - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom