A soft orange sunset settled over Humboldt Bay on Wednesday evening as attendees stepped into the Humboldt Association of Realtors’ meeting room, greeted by a table of cookies, coffee, and a low hum of conversation. Close to three dozen people took their seats, a crowd primarily composed of realtors, deeply invested in what happens next for the county’s abandoned cannabis grow sites.

The forum brought together four agency representatives whose work intersects at the point where cannabis permitting ends and remediation begins — folks from the Humboldt County Building and Planning Department, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board.

The evening opened with an overview from Cliff Johnson, a planning manager with Planning and Building, who told the room that the scale of abandonment is larger than most people realize.

“In 2016, we received almost 2,400 applications from commercial cannabis activities. And around 2022, we had somewhere around 1,300 active cannabis sites. Most recently, we have approximately 850, so that’s because a lot of these sites are being abandoned,” said Johnson. “A lot of them are withdrawing from the cannabis permit site system, and there’s also a lot more cannabis sites that have never made it all the way through the permit process and have also abandoned their operations.”

Abandoned grows

Johnson described what the county routinely finds at the abandoned grow sites, while showing the audience photos of graded flats, collapsed hoop houses, scattered trash, crumbling plastic covers, unpermitted ponds and electrical systems. The unpermitted work and crumbling hoop houses, row covers, and illegal grading are all remnants of the green rush that now fall to new landowners, Realtors, and agencies to untangle.

“The county ordinance has requirements for sites when those permits are terminated or abandoned, and there’s some resources on the county websites that are available and can be useful when navigating these properties,” said Johnson. “If you take away anything from this presentation, I really hope that it’s that actively communicating with our department is really going to be the most important thing for everybody, and it’s really critical when trying to get the most accurate information about these properties.”

Johnson said the county’s ordinance requires abandoned sites to be fully remediated, but he acknowledged that officials often don’t know the full extent of what’s on a property until someone new reaches out.

“These are all things that need to be removed from the property once a cannabis site is terminated, whether that’s through closing the permit, or when a site is abandoned, and they don’t actually withdraw or cancel the permit, these things are still required to be removed from the property,” said Johnson.

Johnson urged buyers, sellers, and real estate agents to contact the county early in the process, noting that the property owner can enter into a compliance agreement with the agencies that can help move a property toward closure, even when major work or cleanup remains. There is some infrastructure that might be able to remain on the property, such as greenhouses and hoop houses,  that are zoned for agriculture. Up to 2,500 square feet of greenhouses can remain on the property.

“There are some things that can be permitted and stay on the property, including some things that don’t need to be permitted,” he said.  Water tanks, water storage, those are things that we generally encourage on rural properties, and those can be useful even when there’s not a cannabis operation. Water tanks, 5,000 gallons or less, often do not require a building permit.”

Environmental degradation

Scott Bauer, the state’s new remediation program manager for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife and a Eureka city councilmember, followed with a broader view of the environmental impacts. He said his agency is tracking hundreds of incomplete projects tied to former cannabis operations, including failing culverts, eroding roads, and ponds built without professional engineering.

“About 77% of active permits … they’re out of compliance. That’s a huge number, and that can mean a lot of things. You haven’t done your reporting or what have you, but still, it’s a large number of properties with issues on them,” said Bauer. “Then the legacy sites, we call those our cultivation sites, from about 2015 to 2020, when we were still kind of working through things. They weren’t permitted. We busted them, and they just got abandoned. There are about 200 to 205 of those that are just, you know, everything’s falling apart.”

He described greenhouse plastic that has been sitting outside for five years, and it crumbles into “fairy dust” in your hands, becoming tiny microplastics that can easily spread into spring water. Other concerns were failing culverts from improper grading that dump sediment into salmon streams, and ponds built without professional engineering that may eventually breach. Bauer showed the audience an aerial photo of the Big Creek area, which showed dirt plots exposed in the heavily wooded, lush green landscape.

“There’s about 35 cultivation sites there. Two of them have licenses. Thirty-three sites are just sitting there, you know, depositing dirt into our streams,” said Bauer. “And Big Creek flows into the South Fork of the Trinity on the far side there, all these little creeks are really cool, really important for salmon, steelhead, and for other critters.”

Bauer said the CDFW’s concern extends far beyond abandoned greenhouses and trash piles, because the North Coast is one of California’s most important biodiversity regions. He pointed to the county’s unusually high amphibian diversity, its bird richness, its salmon streams and the mammals and reptiles that depend on intact habitat: all of which are affected by sediment, plastics and leftover infrastructure from former grow sites.

“We are a special place,” said Bauer. “Humboldt County, the North Coast of California, is special, and we want to make sure that those habitat values are maintained.”

Bauer explained that the state’s Cannabis Restoration Grant Program is funded through the Environmental Restoration and Protection Account, which receives a portion of cannabis sales tax. The program brings in about $20 million a year for remediation work and has already helped licensed cultivators clean up former grow sites. Access to the funds is limited. Only tribes, nonprofits and public agencies are eligible to apply, meaning individual landowners and for‑profit businesses must partner with an eligible entity to receive support.

“I often think about how we spent the past 30-40 years doing timberland restoration, all that previous logging, and did all that damage over the decades. We’ve done all that work. We’ve spent hundreds of millions of dollars,” said Bauer. “The green rush is over, and now we have this next thing that we’re going to be cleaning up. You know that we’ve got probably 30 years to clean up, but look forward to working with you all in the future.”

Water quality impacts

Adona White of the North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board emphasized that abandoned sites often leave behind fertilizers, soil piles, fuel tanks, and eroding roads, all of which can affect downstream water quality.

White said the North Coast region carries some of the state’s most significant ecological responsibilities, from sensitive streams to species that depend on clean water and intact habitat.

“We’re up here in the North Coast region, Region 1, because we’re the most interesting with the most interesting species and water resources to protect,” said White.

White said the Water Board’s cannabis program centers on enforcing its general order and addressing the water quality threats that often remain long after a grow is abandoned. Many of the issues overlap with what other agencies encounter, such as disturbed soils, unstable grading, failing stream crossings, and runoff that can carry sediment into streams, as well as improperly stored chemicals and greenhouse waste.

“We want to make sure chemicals, fertilizers, and petroleum are properly stored or removed, and that trash, potting soils, and riparian disturbance are addressed on these sites,” said White.

White said obtaining a Water Board permit can be a demanding process, often requiring technical assessments and long‑term monitoring. She explained that permitted sites must complete the work, submit implementation reports, and meet the conditions of their water quality certifications under the Clean Water Act. She urged sellers to clean up sites before listing them, remove plastics and fertilizers, and formally terminate any existing enrollment rather than going silent.

“The cleanup orders describe the responsible party, and that stuff stays true even in the instance of a sale, but we can work with the buyers and sellers and ensure that the remediation can proceed,” said White. “If there are new enrollment applications, some of the common delays could be avoided by ensuring that you know about the unpaid invoices from the previous owners, that the application doesn’t have a conflicting risk level from the previous enrollment on the same parcels.”

‘Struggle to clean up sites’

John Ford, Humboldt County’s planning director, fielded several questions from the audience about cleaning up the abandoned or out-of-compliance grow sites. The panel had spoken of the opportunity to work with nonprofits to address the abandoned grows.

“Part of our struggle to clean these sites up and use governmental money is that governmental money can’t be to the benefit of a private individual,” said Ford. “But if there were nonprofits, and there were organizations that were nonprofits that were formed to clean up sites that would create jobs that would address some of what’s going on, and that would be able to absorb all that money that is available to do this.”

Ford made it clear that the county’s priority is remediation, not punishment. He added that the county routinely works with buyers who want to take responsibility for cleanup.

“Sometimes it takes a little bit more work … they enter into a compliance agreement to get it done within six months or a year,” said Ford. “We do that without a fee, without a fine, without anything, because our ultimate objective is to see these properties (cleaned up). That’s our starting point.”

Maranda Vargas can be reached at (707) 441-0504