A Win for Cannabis and Cuyama Community

The mantra “do no harm” guides a settlement agreement reached between Cuyama Valley farmer Jean Gaillard and a would-be cannabis grower, Cuyama Farms LLC. It requires no new net use of water by cannabis farms that sign on to the agreement and in exchange, members of the Cuyama Valley Cannabis Advisory Committee agreed to forgo appealing participating growers’ projects and to support them should others appeal.

In the case of Cuyama Farms, the planned 35 acres of cannabis under 18-foot hoop houses will be watered through an offset at a neighboring dairy farm, which also grows carrots, corn, and other crops. The guidelines are all about transparency and require new growers to avoid interfering with existing well water uses. As part of the settlement, they were incorporated into the project description for Cuyama Farms, an important step as it is yet unclear how much water cannabis requires in the parched valley. The valley has a groundwater basin that is the most severely over-drafted in Santa Barbara County, dropping by eight feet per year in some places. It’s among 21 basins throughout California considered “critically over-drafted” and often receives half the amount of replenishing rain that is pumped out.

The water used to grow cannabis, the only crop that can be regulated in this way, must be 100 percent offset by paying another farmer to stop irrigating or install a more efficient irrigation system. Cuyama has been divided into six water regions, and the offset must be in the same region, or if in another, the offset increases to 150 percent of water used.