LAKE COUNTY, Calif. — As California’s drought conditions worsen, local officials are facing increased water demands from proposed projects and, at the same time, pushback from residents and a request from the state to cut back on water use.
Those issues are coming to the fore increasingly during the Lake County Planning Commission’s twice-monthly meetings.
The commission last met on July 8, the same day that Gov. Gavin Newsom held a news conference at the diminishing Lopez Reservoir in San Luis Obispo County to ask Californians to reduce their water usage by 15% as the state’s drought deepens.
The conservation the state is seeking crosses all sectors — from residential to commercial, from industry to agricultural.
In Lake County, officials are facing a steady stream of hundreds of cannabis-related project permits, with many opponents of the project bringing up one main concern: water supply.
That was the case on July 8, when the commission voted to continue its discussion until later in the month on a large cannabis operation at High Valley Ranch due to water-related questions, while approving two smaller commercial cannabis projects that will use millions of gallons of water each month.
Lake County’s approach to the projects that will use large amounts of water hasn’t seemed to change in the wake of a local drought emergency declared by Sheriff Brian Martin and later ratified by the Board of Supervisors this spring.
The supervisors held a discussion on June 8 about the drought, with particular emphasis on water trucks drawing from the lake and illegal cannabis. But what they didn’t cover was whether there is a need to reconsider legal projects of all types that use large amounts of water.
For those projects in the proverbial pipeline that make it to the planning commission, water studies accompanying planning documents are either missing, brief or appear outdated, a fact the commissioners themselves have noted.
And commissioners have indicated that the lack of information is a challenge.
The July 8 meeting was notable for discussions the commission and county staff would have about what information they wanted and needed, and the discretion they have to seek it.
“I don’t feel like we’re getting consistent water information with each application,” said District 1 Commissioner John Hess, raising concern about being in a drought period, with the potential for the situation to worsen.
At another point in the meeting, Hess said all applications — including large ones — are undergoing increased scrutiny because of the drought.
He said the commission also has expressed that it wants more guidance from the Board of Supervisors on water and how to judge projects in light of water-related concerns.
Continuing a project over water
At the request of applicant Elli Hagoel, the commission agreed to bring the High Valley Ranch project back at its meeting set for this Thursday, July 22. Hagoel said that would give him more time to gather information to respond to the water-related questions.
Hagoel, along with SourzHVR Inc. and Avi Pollack, are seeking a major use permit and mitigated negative declaration for a proposed project on a 649-acre parcel that’s one of seven that make up the 1,640-acre High Valley Ranch.
Aviona LLC purchased the property from PSI World in February for a reported $8 million, according to online records.
Planning documents for the July 8 meeting showed that the project proposes a canopy area of 3,485,000 square feet and 11 buildings totaling 110,000 square feet for storage and drying of cannabis. Packing and distribution will be located in the 13,000 square foot conference center.
Large projects like the one proposed by Hagoel, Pollack and SourzHVR Inc. are appearing more commonly in Lake County, causing concerns for neighbors.
Over the last several months, proposals for big operations submitted by Joseph Gustafson near Lakeport and Zarina Otchkova of WeGrow LLC next to Hidden Valley Lake have gotten significant pushback from neighbors.
In the case of Gustafson, the commission put off a decision in May due to continuing questions about violations from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife that the state said had not yet been resolved.
The commission did approve Otchkova’s property, but neighbors appealed it and in June the Board of Supervisors upheld that appeal but without prejudice, allowing her to resubmit it. Otchkova’s consultant told the county they intend to resubmit the project in the near future.
Neighbors of High Valley Ranch also brought up concerns about quality of life — from dust to smell, traffic and impacts on the land. One asked how much marijuana Lake County needs.
At the same time, several neighbors and businesses — among them, Brassfield Winery — voiced support for the SourzHVR Inc. project, praising Hagoel and his team for doing extensive outreach to neighbors.
However, the drought and resulting water shortages turned out to be a factor that halted the commission’s forward motion on the project temporarily.
In fact, it would be revealed during the discussion that there had been water analysis done on the project, but that it wasn’t included in the staff report for the meeting.
Staff also told the commission that the California Department of Fish and Wildlife reported there were violations, which had to do with setbacks from creeks and tributaries. The California Highway Patrol’s Clear Lake Area office also had raised concerns about traffic.
Planner Katherine Schaefers, in going over a Lake County ordinance on groundwater usage with the commission, explained that the project was considered to meet the “safe yield” requirements.
A project falls under safe yield when the amount of water it will extract doesn’t exceed the water supply of the basin in any calendar year, doesn’t lower water levels so as to make further drilling of water wells uneconomical and doesn’t cause water pumped from the basin to deteriorate below water drinking standards.
She said the project’s initial study found that 60 to 70% of the irrigation water will be returned to the aquifer through infiltration in an average year and an aquifer performance test concluded the water supply and the property’s wells were more than adequate.
During the ensuing discussion, District 3 Commissioner and Chair Batsulwin Brown noted, “I’m really puzzled why an environmental impact report is not a part of the package.”
Brown, a member of the Elem Colony Pomo, also voiced concerns about traffic, water, the Fish and Game violations and the treatment of cultural resources.
Regarding the latter, a cultural resource report on the property referenced a prehistoric site that is said meets the criteria to be a significant historical resource. Brown was concerned about potential destruction of such archaeological sites.
“They’re nonrenewable,” Brown said of such sites, adding that if they are graded without data recovery or plans in place, “They’re gone forever.”
The project team noted that preconstruction surveys are going on and because they got their early activation late, they had to do a lot of the work in a very short period of time.
Among the neighbors raising objections, Doug Logan — who said his grandparents bought land in Clearlake Oaks more than 100 years ago and he now feels like he’s being forced off his property — noted his well is exhausted. He questioned how a planner can think that a project that uses so much water would be OK in the midst of the worst drought in 50 years.
Don Van Pelt, who lives next door to the ranch with his wife, said he was alarmed that the project was given early activation. He said the reports on the project are inadequate.
Richard Derum, a Realtor, cannabis consultant and grower, said Lake County is an ideal place to grow cannabis, and that if Lake County is to move forward and succeed with cannabis, it has to embrace big farms that can increase the poundage produced.
Jonathan Walters, director of vineyard and estate operations at Brassfield Winery, said they originally were hesitant when the company approached them, but he’s spent the last six month working with them on a weekly basis and he’s completely on board with it.
Hagoel said he had tried to talk to the neighbors, but after hearing their testimony, he thinks he didn’t scratch the surface, as he didn’t expect so much resistance.
During the commissioners’ discussion, Brown said he was concerned about the project’s overall impact on the community — from traffic to water, and biological and cultural resources. His tribe also was not a part of the process, some of his concerns weren’t addressed in the documents and he wasn’t prepared to support it.
Commissioner John Hess asked if his colleagues would be willing to continue the project discussion. They agreed, with both Brown and District 4 Commissioner Christina Price saying they wanted more information about hydraulics, water and the aquifer as a whole.
“Part of this is a question of drought,” said Hess, explaining the desire for more time as well as the greater scrutiny being placed on the projects.
Price said her main concern is recharge of the aquifer and the resulting impact on neighbors, noting they’re aware of multiple wells. “What my main concern is, is the ripple effect.”
The commission voted to continue the discussion until its July 22 meeting.
In the meantime, the applicants have submitted a new water report that shows the project will use 353 acre feet — or 115 million gallons — per year.
The report states, “The current and future water use demands for the cumulative area of impact constitute approximately 1.4% of the available groundwater.”
It does not, however, explain the impacts of drought on the aquifer or the project, and in fact the word “drought” is absent from the report.
Approving other projects
At the same meeting, the commission approved a cannabis project on 40 acres at 425 and 500 Voight Road in Lakeport owned by Voight Holdings LLC.
For the Voight project, water was again a concern, with businesswoman Toni Scully arguing that she didn’t agree with staff’s assessment of the Big Valley aquifer being “stout.” She also wanted to see a hydrology report.
Other neighbors would note a lack of recharge this year due to not enough rain, with their wells drying up.
In response to comments about the discussion and county staff about the information that would be helpful to have in considering these projects, Deputy County Counsel Nicole Johnson made clear that the commission has a lot of leeway — and the staff has a lot of discretion — to seek more information to make the analysis to that in turn helps the commission make necessary findings on such project.
“Land use is very fluid. Your analysis is site- and project-specific. It’s unique in time and place. So what may be appropriate for one project that seems similar may not be appropriate for the other project that seems similar. So thresholds are not a determinative for you in that way. The absence of one does not prevent you from acting. It doesn’t prevent you from asking for information. It doesn’t prevent you from requesting the data you need in order to make an informed decision,” Johnson said.
She said the county’s ordinance for cannabis projects does not prevent the staff and commission from asking for more information. If staff finds in their analysis that they need more authority, they can ask the Board of Supervisors.
“You are not restricted just because there isn't a threshold in the ordinance itself,” Johnson said.
Hess said that was helpful. He agreed with statements made during the meeting by Associate Planner Eric Porter that not every application has the same amount of detail. The result is that they get inconsistent information when they are trying to review projects on a case-by-case basis. Some of the data, he added, has appeared to be obsolete.
Porter said it’s a challenge for planning that there is no minimal threshold for water supply. He said he didn’t know many details about the aquifer.
“This particular well is strong,” he said referring to the data for the Voigt project. “I’m not convinced that the area water table is that strong based on testimony. But is it fixable? I don’t know.”
Nonetheless, the commission would unanimously approve the project permit, with the staff report not including the amount of water to be used.
The Coastle LLC project will be located on 244 acres at 6565 Wilkinson Road in Kelseyville. With a canopy size of 478,000 square feet — or nearly 11 acres — it is projected to use nearly 8.2 million gallons of water during the growing season, which runs from April to November, according to planning documents.
Concerns about Coastle were raised by neighbors concerned about its close proximity to a suburban area as well as Kelseyville Unified School District Superintendent Dave McQueen’s objections that the grow is close to local schools and its potential impact on traffic.
McQueen said one of the properties is only 200 feet from a school property line, and state education code requires a 1,000 foot setback. The applicants maintained that the closest property was 1,200 feet from a school.
The grow also is reported to be 1,500 feet from Grace Church.
The commission ultimately voted 3-1 for the project, with Price voting against it because of her concerns about the close proximity of schools and the presence of children playing in the residential area.
Commissioner Lance Williams was absent for the meeting.
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