Several Acres of Cannabis Approved on Eastern Humboldt Parcel

Eric Sordal of Cali’s Finest and 4 Wheel Properties LLC. [Screenshot from video]

Humboldt County’s Planning Commission has approved a package of cannabis cultivation permits that span multiple acres on a single parcel east of Bridgeville.

At its Jan. 15 meeting, the commission approved four cultivation projects totaling more than 5 acres on an 812-acre parcel accessed from State Route 36 in Larabee Valley in eastern Humboldt.

The permits were considered as an overall project and all of them consist of outdoor cultivation, four acres of it new, along with “ancillary nurseries.”

Annual combined water use is estimated at 4.6 million gallons drawn from three existing ponds and a proposed rainwater catchment pond along with five permitted groundwater wells. Senior Planner Steven Santos said all of the wells were “evaluated by a geologist who determined that they’re all hydrologically disconnected.”

Onsite processing is proposed for the existing cultivation and the new operations will use offsite processing.

A mix of solar and grid power is proposed and the only generator use will be for emergency back-up.

The four farms in the project package are approved under conditional use permits plus an additional permit for restoration work in one of the cultivation areas.

The applicants are Natura Blue inc., 4 Wheel Properties LLC, Jennifer Dunn and Cali’s Finest LLC.

There was no public comment during the hearing and only one written comment was received.

The federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has property adjacent to a corner of the project parcel and the day before the meeting, the agency submitted a letter bringing up some concerns.

Those are proximity of cultivation to BLM land and to northern spotted owl habitat, and potential use of BLM access easements in the context of cannabis being illegal under federal law.

But Santos said the cultivation areas are far from the BLM property boundary and owl habitat, and BLM easements won’t be used for access.

There was some discussion about use of wells and concern about over-pumping.

Planning Director John Ford acknowledged the challenges of hydrological mapping.

“One of the struggles that we’ve had in dealing with cannabis in general is how to begin to grapple with the fact that our groundwater sources are discontinuous, they’re fragmented, they’re extremely hard to map and there’s only a few actual basins in the county that are acknowledged,” he said. “And so I understand the idea of over-pumping and the danger of that, but I would also offer that what we’re trying to do is look and use a reasonable standard of whether or not proximity, depth of well and elevation of water bodies in the area would cause the ability for it to even be connected or to pull from that source.”

Eric Sordal, the operator of the farms under the 4 Wheel Properties and Cali’s Finest permits, responded to over-pumping concerns, saying his wells weren’t activated prior to doing a hydrology report.

“The wells weren’t pumped or over-pumped, they were never used until that report was done,” he continued.

The commission unanimously approved each of the permits.