In Hollywood westerns, the cowboys are forever fighting with
the farmers; in Santa Barbara County, such inter-agricultural feuding involves
the new wave of bud-tending cannabis growers who find themselves pitted against
avocado ranchers in the south and wine-grape viniculturalists to the north. In
an attempt to keep a lid on such friction, the county supervisors voted to
impose an after-the-fact cap on the total amount of acreage that can be planted
with cannabis in Santa Barbara County. In addition, the new cap — imposed
nearly two years after the supervisors crafted the county’s first cannabis
ordinance — is designed to alleviate growing tensions over cannabis at the
rural-urban interface, typically home to ranchettes and other expressions of
suburban life.
The new cap is 1,575 acres countywide, but that does not
include the 186-acre cap on greenhouse cultivation in the Carpinteria Valley,
adopted in response to community unrest over the concentration of cultivation
taking place on Highway 192 and the odors thus generated. These caps reflect
pretty much the amount of cannabis in the development review pipeline as of
July 9. Not all of that will make it to the finish line of the county’s
approval process.
The take by longtime critics of the cannabis industry — and
the supervisors’ open-armed response to it — was tepid. “Too little too late,”
said Renee O’Neil, an outspoken and often theatrical anti-cannabis crusader
from Tepusquet Canyon, who suggested the supervisors were finally providing the
level of protection they should have “three years ago.” Several members of
Concerned Carpinterians argued the supervisors need to impose a cap that limits
how much cannabis can be cultivated per parcel, as other counties have done.