Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2014
Source: North Coast Journal (Arcata, CA)
Copyright: 2014 North Coast Journal
Contact:  http://www.northcoastjournal.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2833
Author: Thadeus Greenson

'THE REVOLUTION STARTS HERE'

A Fledgling Political Action Committee's Push to Regulate Weed in Humboldt

It's Dec. 8, and three members of California Cannabis Voice Humboldt 
are sitting in the Journal's Old Town office.

There's a sense of urgency - and even a little desperation - as they 
explain how the group has grown from its inaugural meeting less than 
six months ago to push itself to the forefront of the 18-year-old 
conversation about how Humboldt County should regulate its largest industry.

In some ways it's been a tough week for California Cannabis Voice 
Humboldt. Copies of the group's draft outdoor marijuana cultivation 
ordinance started trickling out a couple of weeks before and have 
captured several local headlines, most of which the group feels have 
tilted negative, focusing on its ambitious timeline and concerns in 
the environmental community.

What's missing from the conversation, they say, is just what is at stake.

"You thought the end of timber was bad?" asks Luke Bruner, CCVH's 
co-founder and treasurer. "Well, if we lose cannabis all we have left is meth."

"From an industry standpoint, the urgency comes from a need for 
survival," adds Patrick Murphy, the group's community outreach 
director in Willow Creek.

The way Bruner, Murphy and CCVH stakeholder Isaiah O'Donnell tell it, 
the legalization of recreational marijuana use is sure to hit 
California ballots in 2016 and be voted into law. Widespread trends 
in the industry, they say, suggest that change - likely to come with 
the state's first regulatory framework for growing and selling 
marijuana - will result in a limited number of permitted producers. 
Those permits are likely to end up in the hands of a few massive, 
large-scale growers, they say, pointing to examples in Colorado's 
burgeoning recreational weed market, Minnesota's medical model and 
elsewhere. The result, they say, will be that Humboldt County's 
10,000 marijuana farms (CCVH's number) will be squeezed out of the 
newly regulated industry and, consequently, more than a quarter of 
the county economy will evaporate with them.

"We can't stress enough how big the consequences are," Bruner says. 
The sliver of hope the group has glommed onto is that whatever state 
regulatory framework emerges from California's legalization push 
ultimately does one of two things: gives preference to growers who 
have a documented history of being in compliance with local 
regulations, or grandfathers in functioning local ordinances.

Either way, they say, Humboldt County - which has largely been 
paralyzed with inaction on the regulation conversation - needs to 
move quickly by approving and adopting a large-scale outdoor 
marijuana ordinance that gives growers a chance to be compliant and 
move their operations completely aboveboard. That's why the group is 
working on an initiative ordinance, which state law says the group 
can take directly to county voters if the board of supervisors 
chooses not to enact it. It's a power play - a successful one - and 
it's making a host of stakeholders throughout the county more than nervous.

It's an effort that's also been very successful in taking the 
all-but-dormant conversation surrounding marijuana regulation and 
pushing it to the forefront of Humboldt County politics.

But Bruner, O'Donnell and Murphy dismiss talk of any power play, 
saying this is a real response to a very urgent need. Large scale 
corporations are zeroing in on California's cannabis industry, they 
say, poised to wipe out small farmers permanently. It's up to 
Humboldt to flip the script that's played out elsewhere, unite and 
come up with a model that protects the little guy.

"The revolution starts here," Bruner says. And the clock, he says, is 
ticking. CCVH wants something on the books this spring, before the 
start of the outdoor growing season.

The principal guiding California's provisions allowing local citizens 
to pass initiative ordinances is a populist one. "The idea is when we 
have corrupt government or a government that's not acting in the best 
interest of the people, we need a way to go around them," explains 
Ryan Emenaker, a political science professor at College of the 
Redwoods. "It gives people the power to enact what we think is 
important, which is very much in line with democratic ideals."

But, the professor quickly adds, initiatives get complicated. "The 
advantage is that anyone can put forward a ballot initiative," he 
says. "The drawback is that anybody can put forward a ballot initiative."

The business of making laws and ordinances like one regulating 
Humboldt's marijuana industry - which a 2011 study conservatively 
estimated accounts for more than $400 million of the county's $1.6 
billion economy - is easier said than done. Through traditional 
channels, these types of ordinances face a long road of committee 
input, legal review, public comment, California Environmental Quality 
Act review, planning commission review and public discussion by the 
county board of supervisors. The path can take years and, even if 
approved by the board, there's no guarantee the finished product will 
look anything like the original drafts.

That's because the system is designed to find middle ground and to 
try to identify and address unintended consequences.

But with an initiative, the process is more direct.

If you have something you want done, you simply draft an ordinance 
and get signatures from 15 percent of the county's registered voters.

The ordinance would then come before the board, which would have 
three options: Adopt it as written, call a special election or order 
a staff report on the ordinance, which would have to be completed in 
30 days, after which the board would have 10 days to approve the 
ordinance or put it before voters by calling a special election.

Less review means more room for error and a higher likelihood of 
unintended consequences, Emenaker says, pointing to the county's 2004 
attempt at passing a ban on growing genetically modified organisms. 
That initiative, Emenaker says, wasn't properly vetted and contained 
a fatal flaw. By the time it showed up on ballots, Emenaker says, 
even its authors weren't supporting it. Despite the concept's 
widespread support, it would be a decade before proponents took a 
stab at another initiative, getting it passed in November. "There's a 
huge cost to getting these things wrong," Emenaker says.

Kathleen Lee, a political science lecturer at Humboldt State 
University, says it's also important to remember that citizen's 
initiatives can't be modified once they are passed except through 
another vote of the people, making it difficult for them to fix 
problems or adapt to changing situations. As an example, Lee points 
to 1996's Proposition 215, a purposefully vague initiative that 
essentially decriminalized marijuana in California for medical use 
but didn't specify any regulatory system.

Few at the time imagined the scale and complexity of today's industry 
but subsequent efforts by state lawmakers to regulate the medical 
marijuana industry have been deemed unconstitutional because they 
restricted Proposition 215. The result is the industry's current state.

Back in the Journal offices, Bruner, O'Donnell and Murphy indicate 
there's not even universal agreement within CCVH that the initiative 
ordinance is the best path forward.

Supervisor Mark Lovelace, they say, has indicated he'd be willing to 
take the issue up as an urgency ordinance of the board, which would 
allow it to go through an expedited public process. "I really think 
that's probably the better solution," Murphy says. But if that 
process stalls or gets bogged down, Murphy says CCV is prepared to go 
forward with the initiative. "The initiative process is not a 
weapon," Murphy says. But it is a tool that will remain on the table.

Ultimately, though, whether it's through an initiative or a board 
ordinance, Murphy says it's imperative that whatever regulatory 
system comes out of this process will have widespread buy-in from all 
stakeholders. It needs to be something that growers, 
environmentalists, cops and local government can stand behind - 
that's the only way it will be taken seriously by the state.

But there have already been some bumps in the road.

For its first stakeholders meeting, CCVH invited a few dozen folks - 
environmentalists, growers and local officials - to tables decked out 
with Play-doh and Koosh balls and, later, a catered lunch.

The process was supposed to be fun, foster creativity and 
collaboration. It got off to a good start, according to a handful of 
folks who attended, with much discussion of both the importance of 
cannabis to the county and its economy and the need to clean up 
cannabis' environmental footprint.

Then, an environmentalist in the room asked about the 
10,000-square-foot canopy allotment in some of CCVH's paperwork, 
contending the number was too high.

When the group convened again, the number had jumped to 20,000 square 
feet and many in the environmental community started to feel their 
input was being ignored. "At the second meeting, we were watching 
environmental stakeholders who'd been invited into the process get up 
and walk out of the room," says Hezekiah Allen, executive director of 
the Emerald Growers Association, a local marijuana trade association 
focusing its efforts on lobbying at the state level.

The initiative's first drafts did little to foster unity but offer a 
rough overview of the group's framework.

The CCVH proposal calls for marijuana to become a principally 
permitted use on parcels larger than 5 acres, including on timber 
production zone lands, meaning growing marijuana is allowed without 
any need for a discretionary permit as long as one follows the rules.

Growing activities would be licensed by the Humboldt County 
Agricultural Commissioner's Office as long as growers demonstrate 
that they would: abide by state law, employ "best management 
practices," agree to random site visits (the ordinance doesn't state 
by whom), pay all applicable fees (it doesn't specify what the fees 
would be or how - or by whom - they would be determined), agree not 
to use chemical fertilizers and rodenticides not approved by the 
commissioner, register with the California Employment Development 
Department and be in compliance with state labor laws, and agree to 
have random samples of their crops tested for pesticides, herbicides 
and "other biologic or chemical contaminations" (it doesn't specify 
who would do the testing). Further, the ordinance states that all 
applicants should have a "cultivation and operations plan approved by 
the commissioner and state and county agencies, as appropriate, that 
meets or exceeds all minimum legal standards for water storage and 
use, water conservation, drainage, erosion control, runoff, pest 
control, watershed protection, [and] protection of habitat." The 
draft doesn't say when such approval would be appropriate or exactly 
what minimum legal standards would apply, given that there are no 
existing industry specific standards.

The commissioner's office would then declare applicants who provide 
all the aforementioned documentation and show themselves to be in 
compliance as "certified Humboldt County growers," a designation that 
would be valid for one year and renewable following annual 
inspections of the applicants' cultivation site(s) and certification 
of laboratory test results for their most recent crops (tests will be 
conducted at a commissioner-approved laboratory for the presence of 
pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, mold, fungus or other 
contaminants). Testing is expensive, however, and the ordinance 
doesn't mention who will pay for it or where it will be done.

As should be expected in any effort to bring a large-scale, 
under-the-table industry into a regulatory system, the plan outlined 
in the ordinance includes some logistical challenges before even 
getting to the hot-button issues that dominate the marijuana 
cultivation debate.

First, there is the fact that this would represent a massive increase 
in duties for the agricultural commissioner's office, which currently 
has six employees and oversaw some 300 certified farms in 2012, the 
last year for which numbers are available. CCVH estimates there are 
10,000 marijuana farmers in the county, a number that would represent 
about 9 percent of Humboldt's adult population, according to U.S. 
Census figures.

Agricultural Commissioner Jeff Dolf declined to comment on the 
proposed ordinance in an email to the Journal, but did say he's in 
discussions with board members about "what form a commissioner's 
office cannabis cultivation program could take, and what resources 
would be needed by the commissioner's office to operate a regulatory 
program for cannabis."

Looking through the draft ordinance, California Department of Fish 
and Wildlife environmental scientist Scott Bauer says he's also not 
sure how his department would deal with the influx of permit 
applications. The department has been practically begging growers for 
years to come in and get their water uses licensed, Bauer says, to 
little avail.

But if all came in at once it would be overwhelming, he says, adding 
that the department would likely have to come up with some kind of 
programmatic permitting that allows folks to get their permits by 
pledging to follow the rules.

But even that new program, Bauer says, would likely necessitate an 
additional full-time environmental scientist position to do nothing 
but permit grow operations and conduct follow-up compliance checks.

But those growing pains are to be expected with any ordinance seeking 
to regulate marijuana.

It seems likely CCV's proposal will ultimately sink or swim on three 
key issues: allowable canopy size, growing on TPZ lands and revenue.

As the bumps in the process thus far attest, the question of 
allowable canopy sizes is undoubtedly the largest separation between 
growers and environmentalists. Bauer, the fish and wildlife 
scientist, has spent years with the department studying the impacts 
of marijuana grows and water diversions on salmon-bearing streams.

In that process, he and the department have put together aerial 
watershed maps identifying growing operations and estimating canopy sizes.

Bauer says the department recently completed a map of the Mad River 
watershed, and found about 160 grow operations with an average canopy 
size of 2,300 square feet, which he says fits with the rough averages 
he's found elsewhere in the county.

CCV's latest draft of the ordinance contains a range of canopy size 
options, from 1 percent of total parcel size to specific caps that go 
from a 1,750-foot canopy on parcels between 5 and 10 acres to 60,000 
square feet for parcels larger than 40 acres.

The range is huge, and unacceptable for many environmental groups.

Dan Ehresman, executive director of the Northcoast Environmental 
Center, says these numbers - especially on the upper end - are a 
"huge concern," adding that "what CCV is proposing is unequivocally 
the highest level of principally-permitted operations" anywhere in the state.

For Bauer, water impacts are of chief concern.

 From a strict diversion standpoint, he says a system that requires 
growers to store water in wet winter months and forbids them from 
pulling water during the summer may accommodate some of these larger 
canopy sizes without diminishing river flows in the summer.

However, Bauer says that's only part of the equation, as it's the 
partnership of water flow and water quality that creates sustainable habitats.

It's impossible to know the impacts to water quality of fertilizer 
and sediment runoffs from these grows without further study, the type 
CEQA would provide, he says. "That's what we would want to analyze," 
he says, adding that CEQA could also help determine if different 
standards are necessary for different watersheds.

Murphy, CCVH's community outreach director in Willow Creek, says 
environmental groups have to realize that some growers are pressing 
for an ordinance that allows up to 2 principally permitted acres of 
canopy. The quandary CCVH faces, he says, is that a canopy cap that's 
too stringent will result in zero compliance and zero buy in from 
growers. One that's too large, meanwhile, will get no support from 
environmental groups and possibly even open the door to the large 
corporations the group is concerned will take over the industry.

What everyone has to realize, he says, is that 2-acre and 
1,000-square-foot caps are both nonstarters. "These two numbers are 
equally unrealistic," he says.

Bruner, O'Donnell and Murphy say CCVH's next draft will begin to zero 
in on a middle ground to the canopy question, but all think 10,000 
square feet is reasonable, as it would allow someone to grow 99 
10-foot-by-10-foot plants.

The other question looming is the ultimate legal status of growing on 
timber production zone land, or lands that have been set aside for 
the preservation of timber.

These lands are reportedly rife with growing activity and CCVH feels 
marijuana cultivation should be an acceptable compatible use that 
helps preserve the bulk of them as forest lands.

But environmental groups worry this could lead to the further 
fragmentation of the forests, especially considering these parcels 
are generally large and would accommodate larger canopy sizes under a 
tiered approach.

Bauer says it's important to remember a garden's canopy isn't its 
only impact, or the only part of an operation that would lead to 
deforestation and erosion issues.

A garden has to be serviced by roads, and the ordinance would require 
on-site storage and processing facilities, as well as permit 
temporary labor camps.

All of that has impacts, Bauer says.

Even most environmentalists concede that most potential impacts can 
be adequately mitigated with proper regulation and oversight, but 
that takes a hefty and steady revenue stream.

The fact is California has plenty of laws on the books to deal with 
the environmental crimes being carried out throughout Humboldt's 
watersheds, where streams are being sucked dry and sites are being trashed.

The problem is funding adequate enforcement.

This is a place where environmental groups and others watching say 
CCVH's ordinance is troublingly quiet, including only a brief mention 
of "applicable fees," without going into any detail of what those 
would be or how they would be determined. "That's the crucial 
component of anything that we put forward," says Ehresman, "whether 
it's taxes or fees, we have to have some funding mechanism for 
regulation, oversight and enforcement."

This isn't lost on the CCVH trio, as all talk about the need to fund 
proper oversight and even the county's need for additional revenue to 
invest in schools, infrastructure and law enforcement. A more 
detailed accounting of where revenue will come from, they say, will 
be in the next draft.

Dressed in jeans and a button-up shirt, Murphy smiles as he concedes 
that getting Humboldt County to present a united front on this issue 
is going to be tricky.

He says CCVH has already made some mistakes, but he pledges that the 
group is intent on getting this done. The only way to do that, he 
says, is to make sure everyone has a seat at the table.

But he, Bruner and O'Donnell are also quick to say it would be 
foolish for anyone to step into that process expecting a single 
ordinance to instantly correct the lawlessness that has been allowed 
to fester for decades.

Ultimately, O'Donnell says getting an ordinance passed that gets 5 
percent of growers to comply and move their operations into 
legitimacy in the first year would be a win.

The hope then is that legitimacy would be incentivized, with licensed 
growers being allowed to enter into sanctioned marijuana auctions and 
other things that help them band together and demand a better price 
for their product.

Targeted busts that hold those out of compliance accountable while 
leaving compliant farmers' plants in the ground could further spike 
an interest in coming into compliance. And the more the industry tips 
toward compliance, the more growers following the rules would be 
willing to turn in those who are not, they say.

"The key is compliance over time," Bruner says. "Somewhere in there 
is a critical mass, and the tipping point will come."

Humboldt County grows some of the finest cannabis in the world, they 
say, and that tipping point could ultimately lead to a booming niche 
marijuana market, the type that would make the county what Napa is to 
wine. They picture a boutique industry with tasting shops, a steady 
stream of tourists coming to sample the latest crops and tours 
catering to international marijuana connoisseurs.

But there's a long road ahead and, at least on CCVH's schedule, 
little time to get there.

And, for better or for worse, it's this upstart group, that Murphy 
concedes is "learning on the fly," that is driving the conversation. 
Bruner says none of them asked to be in this position, noting that 
the board of supervisors had an opportunity four years ago to tackle 
this very issue but walked away from it. Now, they say, it's time to 
get it done or risk watching Humboldt County's largest industry die, 
taking the local economy down with it.

But others say the stakes are too high - for the environment and the 
economy - to hitch this wagon to an initiative crafted largely behind 
closed doors.

They say this needs to be studied, vetted and argued in public to 
make sure everyone is included and there are no unintended consequences.

"I just don't think an initiative is the correct process for a highly 
complicated land use decision," says Natalynne DeLapp, executive 
director of the Environmental Protection Information Center.

On the phone from Sacramento, where he's lobbying on behalf of the 
Emerald Growers Association to influence any state regulatory bill 
passed this year, Hezekiah Allen agrees.

Allen says CCV has done an "incredible" job of getting people engaged 
and talking about the issue, but he says an ordinance ultimately 
needs to go through CEQA and be vetted in public through a community dialogue.

That way, no matter what happens, the revolution will be televised.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom