Farm Site Fire Bumps Cannabis Permit Approval (and More from the Planning Commission)

The Bear Fire about 3:30 p.m. on October 2.

The Bear Fire about 3:30 p.m. on October 2. [Photo from Brian Hill]

A Humboldt County permit for an existing 11,700 square-foot cannabis farm in the Dinsmore area was set for approval last week but an unusual circumstance led the county’s Planning Commission to postpone it.

The permit was on the consent agenda of the commission’s Oct. 3 meeting but Senior Planner Cliff Johnson said his department learned the farm site was “the cause of a fire that spread to the surrounding lands” the day before the meeting.

He recommended tabling the permit to allow staffers to “see what the information actually supports and come back with a more informed recommendation.”

Planning Director John Ford said more needs to learned about the nature of the blaze.

“We want you to be fully aware that we don’t feel equipped to give you good answers about the fire right now,” he continued.

The fire in question is the Valley Fire that spread to about 18 acres and burned down a structure on a neighbor’s property.

For one member of the commission, the flames burned close to home.

“I do live out where this fire was,” said Commissioner Iver Skavdal.

The fire spread to about 18 acres, he continued, but CalFire, the U.S. Forest Service and local volunteer fire departments were “able to get on it and I think they got it wrapped up in two or three hours.”

The farm site is located on Ridge Road near the intersection of County Line Creek Road and River Road. Its owner is listed as Ten Redwoods, LLC.

The farm uses generators for its mixed light farming but the permit includes transition to solar power and full sun cultivation.

Commissioners voted to reschedule the permit for the Nov. 7 meeting.

—-

Also at the meeting, commissioners approved permits allowing a small-scale cannabis farm to expand to an acre and add distribution services, non-volatile manufacturing, processing and retail sales.

The permits allow the applicant, RiverRidge Farms, LLC, to augment its existing 8,855 square-foot mixed light cannabis farm in the Piercy area.

Under one permit, 35,000 square feet of new mixed light cultivation area will be added along with the other uses.

A second permit will allow “farm-based retail sales with customer traffic,” according to a written staff report.

A groundwater well now supplies irrigation but the permitting includes development of a rainwater catchment system and a 950,000-gallon storage pond, which will allow transition away from use of the well.

The farm site, located near the intersection of Highway 101 and State Highway 271, has a grid power connection and a solar array will be added.

According to an operations plan, a 3,500 square-foot nursery will “start and boost a variety of strains to account for changes in market demand.”

An existing building will house the retail sales operation, which will only sell products made onsite.

Earlier:

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23 Let us come and reason together. Isaiah 1:18
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DELLIB
Guest
DELLIB
4 months ago

DAOAMB BROS your stuff probly aint worth nothing anyway dont bring the county grow tomatoes or something valuable without the permit fee!

Hey Moe!
Guest
Hey Moe!
4 months ago

Leave it up to the neighbor who’s home burned down

Farce
Guest
Farce
4 months ago

But we should definitely let permit pansy growers burn down their neighborhood… I mean- They have Stepped Into The Light and they are Compliant and White Market and Legitimate and all those wonderful good and proper things. Permit Mega-Farms are the heroes of our county. So what if they destroyed all the little people by dumping huge volumes of low-priced cannabis into the traditional black market! They are paying fees and taxes and that makes them Awesome and Delightful keepers of the Cannabis Dream!! And they make sure we are all Free and Safe! (except maybe when we get burned up)…

Dusty Spritzwater
Guest
Dusty Spritzwater
4 months ago
Reply to  Farce

The traditional markets are still trucking along because they are also providing a better price to everybody than the regulated dysfunction.
These guys aren’t delivering any of their toasted weed this round! If you’re big enough to be running a big genny, you are big enough to have some form of fire service compatible water, and means of using it if you’re way out far from help. In hindsight, a few big donations in time and money to juice up Bridgeville, and ol Van Duzen volunteers might have helped a little bit too.
I guess this is one reason everyone is using LLCs! I wonder if their big Ford-Ram-Chevy is registered privately, or to the LLC?

Farmer
Guest
Farmer
4 months ago

What do you mean the firefighters will always show up regardless of whether you have money to donate or not. There was a guy throwing fireballs a couple of days ago. I honestly wonder if they were targeted legal farms because it seems like there were dudes casing not too long ago. People just need to chill and help each other out. No body is doing well traditional or legal market it is the government that fucked it up not the farmers.

Dusty Spritzwater
Guest
Dusty Spritzwater
4 months ago
Reply to  Farmer

My thinking is that once the fire is started it’s too late to go buy an engine. It takes time to boost up the fire companies. Also, the fire departments depend on volunteers to exist. Volunteering in the fire service can only help prepare a landowner to deal with this stuff, hopefully before it gets big. Its a time suck, but you at least learn what to expect in your area. The economy sucks but this event didn’t help anyone in that neighborhood.

Dusty Spritzwater
Guest
Dusty Spritzwater
4 months ago
Reply to  Farce

The traditional market was just that: a market already, with established trust (usually). It was cruising along already working under the pressure of keeping a low profile, and not advertising to, let alone offending society.

CsMisadventures
Guest
CsMisadventures
4 months ago

Fire suppression systems, even a rudimentary one should be part of the process. If CalFire is going to climb all over my ass about grass getting too tall 100′ from a tool shed that is incapable of starting a fire, then it should also be mandated for permitting on stuff that can start a fire. Y’all do want to protect your own grows, yes? So does the guy next to you.

melanopsin
Member
4 months ago

No there’s an idea. Strategic installation of those sprayers that trigger by heat, like those required in buildings.

Martin
Guest
Martin
4 months ago

A simple and unpopular for sure answer from me is the hell with the pot permits. The pot growers as a whole have ruined much of the hill country in our county. They dam up streams for water, leave chemicals like diesel fuel all over the place and shoot any animal that get near the patch. Late at night the mountains look like a million fireflies.

Farmer
Guest
Farmer
4 months ago
Reply to  Martin

We have less than a average farm size of legal cultivation in Humboldt. If your looking for an industry to blame for environmental degradation look to logging. Why is the Van Duzen drying up? Sedimentation from decades of clear cutting. Be reasonable dude it ain’t the growers free ranging cattle and clear cutting acreage. Now Bohn is trying to export our woodchips to China. Old growths are not a renewable resource.

Martin
Guest
Martin
4 months ago
Reply to  Farmer

You are correct in saying logging wrecked the land. But the rules and regulations have changed since those day. I have a small piece of land out near Blocksburg, and logged it about twenty years ago. There were more rules and regulations back then to choke a bull. The property had to be checked for spotted owls by some goof ball that could not call his dog, and the CDFW checked all the streams that needed to be crossed. Almost every single stream, which was dry, had to have a certain size steel culvert installed to their liking, whether there was water present or not. After buying all the needed culvert and installing it, I finally got approval for my logging permit. The property no belongs to my grandkids and I don’t know what will be required in the next few years. As far as Rex Bohn is concerned, he can travel to China with the woodchips and pocket the funds!

Dusty Spritzwater
Guest
Dusty Spritzwater
4 months ago
Reply to  Martin

It’s similar now with weed growing. This fire was a red flag for the permitting of the farm in question.
As far as chipping goes, nobody is going to chip old growth. We all have a legacy problem with the forests post logging. Some means of paying for the thinning required to get to a state where the forests can tolerate fire better again on most days would be a good thing

Martin
Guest
Martin
4 months ago

I agree with part of your comment on forest thinning so they can with stand fire better. Years ago, the Indians used fire to keep the ground clear of brush, leaves, limbs, etc., and it worked great. But today if the same process was used, the no nothing people would be screaming at the top of their lungs to try and stop it. As far as chipping goes, I realize the old growth, second and third grow trees will never be chipped.

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Martin

They have cleared hundreds of feet for fire breaks in the six rivers . They thinned a bunch before the fire it blew right thru it. I know you don’t want to admit that old growth burns but that refers to redwoods. Not fur or pine. The old growth pine is dying the pine Beatles is super bad. And it burns like paper.

CsMisadventures
Guest
CsMisadventures
4 months ago
Reply to  Farmer

Obviously somebody has never owned a cow or familar with dairy/cattle operations in a dairy/cattle grazing region. Free range cattle don’t haul dirt full of fertilizers and diesel uphill….to run back downhill when it rains. That would be you. The water they “pull” is already near the mouths of the rivers where the flat land exists (e.g. floodplains). Where do you pull water from? What’s left of the river water. Before the cattle even get a lick of a creek that they’re not even allowed to wallow in is taken by….guess who again?
Maybe you are one of those that take care of the land and your crop responsibility, but…
Don’t blame logging that has mostly stopped and shut down decades ago. Your folks came in and did a MF-er of a number on the environment by yourselves. Did you kill everything that moved or was a threat to your op? Did you replant forests on previously clear cut acreage? How much plastic tubing and tarps and electricity do you think a head of cattle needs? Did you get a permit for that questionably engineered 5 million gallon retention pond on the side of an unstable slope? Did you pay any sales taxes for years on your product? Some of you did very very little to mitigate anything until government got on your ass, so don’t sit there and act like you didn’t have any effect on the environment. You did. And all that river and ground water test data is public, so if you want to say you were perfect environmental stewards, the data says otherwise. And GIS searchable for every parcel in the state.
Also, woodchips have gone to China for decades. And logs to Japan. That’s nothing new. And a hell of a lot of it doesn’t even come from CA. It comes from southern Oregon. We just have the capacity to load up ships here rather than Portland. But there’s no mills left to process chips into pulp for one. There used to be used for biomass, but now there’s only one plant in Scotia that can do that.
You’ve had 40 years to fix whatever it was, and some groups are doing just that. But you also have a mess of your own to clean up in between. It’s like blaming Regan for the end of the world when people were fucking things up even more in the time since. But let’s keep blaming a dead guy.

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago

Cows are the most unefficient animals on earth. How many gallons of water per cow. Ten times more then a pot plant, probably a hundred. We didn’t kill the people that lived in the area like you guys did. We didn’t have the caveraly guard our land from the people that lived there before you did. Local cattle farmers should be ashamed of themselves

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Farmer

The eel is to. There’s so much gravel plugging up the river it’s going under ground in spots

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Martin

Yeah and there is deer hanging on all their fences. How many deer are hanging on your fence? Why are deer attracted to a pot growers fences? Probably because its Bullshit. Your describing the worst of the out of area growers. They showed up after legalization. The cartel grows did alot of that ,poisen the wildlife, and diverte water. Leave a bunch of hard-core pesticides. It’s funny how 6ou don’t hear about pesticides in food. Round up ready crops sound familiar.

Tdm
Guest
Tdm
4 months ago

The Humboldt County planning commission warned the supervisors about the fire danger surrounding allowing mixed light with generators and all the heat stresses that indoor greenhouse equipment involves. One day, a major chunk of our county will likely burn down due to the forewarned equipment failures. We have been lucky so far.

Last edited 4 months ago
Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Tdm

Probably started in a drying shed. So I don’t get it we had 150 homes burnt down in the August complex. The national forest poured gas all over the property line. But no big deal .

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Unimpressed

I really liked that the national forest investigated itself, and like government agency’s that investigate themselves they found they weren’t responsible for anything.

Unimpressed
Guest
Unimpressed
4 months ago
Reply to  Tdm

Four years ago we had a million acre fire. With national forest pouring gas allover it. And your worried these guys will start a fire