A Carpinteria Valley cannabis farm will install carbon filters for odor control in what concerned neighbors and the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors say is a sign of progress for the industry.
Carbon filtration is an effective form of odor control for cannabis operations, according to an industry-funded study that found Envinity Group filters eliminated 84% of the smell of cannabis before it left the Roadside Blooms greenhouses.
County ordinances require odor abatement plans for Carpinteria Valley farms, but the so-called “scrubbers” are not required.
Some growers are voluntarily installing them to reduce the marijuana smell from their greenhouses, and the county’s Planning Commission has also tried to require some growers to install them as a condition of approval.
Two applicants have protested that requirement to the Board of Supervisors with very different results.
Valley Crest convinced the board to remove the condition for its 5980 Casitas Pass Road cannabis farm during an October hearing.
Two months later, the same operators agreed to implement the technology at Ceres Farm, next door to Valley Crest at 6030 Casitas Pass Road, and asked the Board of Supervisors to give them two years to do it.
“We see the direction that these projects are going, and again, we’ve heard the many calls of our neighbors, the Planning Commission, this board during our last hearing where we challenged this same condition, so I think there’s been substantial change since that last hearing just with the introduction of SCS (Engineers)’s report on the efficacy of these machines,” said Eric Edwards of Headwaters, the operator for both farms, at last week’s Ceres Farm appeal hearing.
Edwards said the company is unsure if it will need an upgrade from Southern California Edison to power all the carbon scrubbers, which could add time to the implementation.
The supervisors approved the project with the condition that operators add carbon scrubbers within 24 months of getting a permit, rather than the 12 months required by the Planning Commission.
In the meantime, the greenhouses will use its Fogco system, which sprays deodorized mist to try and mask or neutralize the cannabis smell.
“This is the standard, this is the best technology … so it just seems to me that we shouldn’t be waiting to ramp up to this best technology, but rather requiring it from the get-go,” Supervisor Laura Capps said of carbon scrubbers.
“Odor has been the biggest problem of this ordinance from day one.”
She added that she’s interested in “tightening up” county rules.
“The best and fastest remedy to this is growers voluntarily adopting carbon scrubbers,” Supervisor Das Williams said. “There’s no way to do it faster than that. We should be supportive of that.”
Neighbor Tim Bliss said the community is “coalescing around carbon scrubbers” and thanked the farm owners and operators for agreeing to install them.
“Until scrubbers are up and running, we neighbors continue to labor under Fogco or a skunky smell,” he said.
Bill Hahn said he has seen progress on the odor control issue in the past few weeks, but reminded the supervisors that the marijuana smell from nearby farms continues to hurt his family’s rose farm business.
Tenants have left the property’s buildings and they can’t offer tours anymore, he said.
Both of these Casitas Pass Road farms are near Cate School. School representatives have appealed multiple cannabis project approvals and have spoken at many cannabis-related hearings asking for odor control measures.
“Don’t you think that all residents of Carpinteria deserve to be protected by the best available method and shouldn’t have to live with a complaint-based system that puts the responsibility on us instead of the growers?” Charlotte Brownlee of Cate School asked the supervisors during the October hearing where they decided not to require carbon scrubbers for Valley Crest.
Several operators have been growing cannabis for years in the Carpinteria Valley without permits under legal non-conforming status, including Valley Crest and Ceres Farm.