Save Arroyo Paredon Watershed
Cresco Cannabis Project Endangers Creek and Is a Nuisance
Dear Santa Barbara County Planning Commissioners, Friends of Save Arroyo Paredon Watershed, and Members of the Media,
I am the founder of Save Arroyo Paredon Watershed (SAPW), a grassroots organization founded in 2021 that is working to protect Carpinteria’s Arroyo Paredon Creek. I am also a farmer and farm business owner whose family farm and homes are located in Carpinteria’s new “cannabis zone,” between Nidever Road and Cravens Lane, off Foothill Road, right next to Cresco, near the Arroyo Paredon Creek. I accidentally became a community activist because, due to my proximity, I have a front-row seat to the nuisance and environmental degradation caused by cannabis in our neighborhood. Today, I am writing, again, to strongly urge the Santa Barbara County Planning Commission to oppose Cresco’s industrial cannabis project adjacent to Arroyo Paredon Creek, at their next meeting on September 1, 2021, on behalf of the 93 neighbors who signed our SAPW petition to oppose the project.
Carpinteria, as I’ve witnessed, is ground-zero for many massive pot operations and is the canary in the coal mine for the environmental disaster which is coming due to Big Cannabis’s relentless push for money, at the expense of local neighborhoods, air quality, and truth. Though I’m often discouraged, I’m an optimistic realist, at heart. I believe in concrete solutions based in scientific research. And, due to Santa Barbara County’s history and interest in environmental justice, I am confident that together we can establish practical, affordable, environmental policies that balance protections of our plants, animals, water, and air with the need for sufficient profit for pot growers. That’s why, working on behalf of SAPW, our family has engaged environmental land-use attorney Elise Cossart Daly, along with a biologist, David Magney, and air quality specialist engineer, Dr. Paul Rosenfeld, to investigate how Cresco’s project will directly endanger Arroyo Paredon Creek and its surrounding air and to urge solutions based on research and facts. We submitted our original findings to the Planning Commission, at its August 11, 2021, meeting, and I am re-submitting the information to you now, to consider. (See attached. It is all part of the public record, as of August 11, 2021.) In further consultation with Ms. Cossart-Daly, Mr. Magney and Dr. Rosenfeld, here are our points, upon review of Cresco’s updated odor plan with carbon scrubbers and more:
