“There has never been anything like this”: California cannabis farmers under regulatory spotlight
Last month, hundreds of Emerald Triangle cannabis farmers received letters from the state threatening penalties unless they complied with California water quality regulations.
Thousands of growers in Northern California have complied with these regulations, to be extended statewide by 2018. But State Water Resources Control Board Office of Enforcement Director Cris Carrigan said that officials at the agency still have their work cut out for them.
There has never been anything like this, dude, Carrigan said with a laugh. Its a $10 billion industry in California that has been unregulated until now. So no, there has never been anything like this before.
Carrigan said the state and regional water boards have come a long way in the past three to four years in terms of cannabis regulation, thanks largely to cannabis cultivators willingness to work toward compliance.
They want to do it, but the question is can they overcome the hurdles after operating in secret for so long? he asked.
The hurdles are plenty, mandatory and expensive.
Emerald Heritage Farms founder and principal consultant Dani Burkhart in Humboldt County works with cultivators seeking to comply with various state regulations.
Its a lot of up-front costs for something you cant amortize over time because you dont know exactly how everything will play out over time, she said. Its a huge investment. But its also something that is worthwhile for the environment. Ideally, these measures were taking are protecting the environment in a more enhanced fashion than what was previously going on.
Burkhart said many farmers seeking to comply with the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Boards Cannabis Cultivation Waste Discharge Regulatory Program will have to spend thousands of dollars to begin the permitting process. The program, adopted in August 2015, requires medical marijuana growers to comply with state and federal water quality laws pertaining to drainage, road construction, fertilizer storage, water sediment and temperature control, and water diversions. The program targets illegal water diversions, road grading, pesticide use and other environmentally harmful practices of the black market cannabis industry.
For many growers who either ignored or were ignorant of these standards, the cost of bringing their properties into good standing can start at a half a million dollars.
I had a client spend $250,000 on a road to have it come into compliance, Burkhart said.
The North Coast program works by placing marijuana grows into tiers dependent on the size and qualities of the site.
Those at the lowest tier need only comply with standard conditions to be in the water boards good graces. Those at the highest tier must develop and submit a cleanup and restoration plan for their sites within a 45-day period, among several other conditions. The permit filing cost can range up to $10,000 depending on the farmers tier, and this fee has to be paid annually in order to renew the permit.
And then if youre not in the tier where you can self-report, then you have to pay a professional to do your water resource protection plan and reporting, which can be another $2,500 to $5,000 per year, Burkhart said. So youre looking at $5,000 to $7,500 just to do the bare minimum of filing paperwork.
Since the North Coast program took effect, Humboldt County cannabis farmers have led the rest of the Emerald Triangle and the North Coast counties in enrollment. But thousands more still have yet to take part in the mandatory program.
On Jan. 27, the North Coast water board mailed 785 enforcement letters to potential cannabis farmers in the Rattlesnake Creek watershed in Trinity County. Another 400 letters were sent to cannabis farmers in Humboldt and Mendocino counties last year.
There are 35 days for people to respond to the letter, which could include a few different options, the boards Senior Water Resource Control Engineer Kason Grady said on Feb. 1. There are some required actions that they either ...
