New Front in Santa Barbara County’s Pot Wars
Cannabis Gains a Foothold in the Parched Cuyama Valley
Santa Barbara County’s most depleted water basin, the Cuyama Valley, is fast becoming the latest battleground in the fight over how — and whether — to address the negative impacts of the lucrative cannabis industry on farming and residential communities.
The giant groundwater basin underlying this sparsely populated, heavily farmed, economically depressed valley is one of California’s 21 most critically over-drafted basins and the only one outside the Central Valley. For 75 years, the Cuyama Valley has been a mecca for water-intensive farming on an industrial scale — first, alfalfa, and now, carrots, a $69 million annual crop.
Now there’s a newcomer on the block. More than 740 acres of outdoor cannabis cultivation has been proposed for the Cuyama Valley and is under review for zoning permits, county planners say. The industry is poised to drop new straws into the declining basin, where some of the well water is 1,000 feet deep and 30,000 years old — so old, it’s known as “fossil water.”
