A Carlotta area cannabis farm is seeking to expand but water use issues and a neighboring property owner’s complaint about odor will complicate county approval.

The permit hearing for the expansion was on the consent agenda of the Humboldt County Planning Commission’s May 7 meeting but it was continued to May 21.

The floor was opened to discussion and public comment, however, and there was a lot of it.

The permit application, from Eureka resident Van Levi doing business as Carlotta Gardens LLC, is for a 20,000 square-foot expansion of an existing 50,000 combination mixed light/outdoor cannabis farm in the Carlotta area.

With the expansion, the farm’s permitted annual water use will increase to 1.76 million gallons sourced from a groundwater well.

And that got a lot of commentary from commissioners.

Commisioner Noah Levy had pulled the continuance for discussion due to “one point that puzzled me” – why a 20,000 square-foot expansion would double the farm’s annual water use.

“Our understanding is that they don’t necessarily believe they will use that much but they want to have the allocation permitted so that they have the ability to experiment with different cultivation methods,” said Senior Planner Cliff Johnson.

Other commissioners flagged water use as a concerning issue that’s bigger than the permit in question.

Saying “I think y’all are probably sick of hearing me say this,” Commissioner Lorna McFarlane reiterated her oft-spoken concerns about “over-extracting from groundwater.”

She said she “would lean towards not allowing an excessive amount of water draw,” adding, “heaven forbid a neighbor’s well was to run dry.”

Groundwater use is an issue the county’s been grappling with for years and a countywide groundwater assessment is being worked on.

“I think some of the water use we permit is already potentially excessive,” said McFarlane, and without a “watershed-scale groundwater assessment” she said the commission is in “very murky territory.”

She added she won’t allow a doubling of water use.

Commissioner Todd Fulton agreed and Commissioner Iver Skavdal said the amount of water use “seems a lot more than we’ve approved on other similar projects.”

Planning Director John Ford said water use is “highly variable because it depends upon the location and the type of farming.”

During a public comment period, a neighbor of the farm said there’s concern about water use because “everybody in Carlotta is on a well.”

But most of her commentary was on another issue.

“It smells terrible when the wind’s blowing our direction, which it usually is,” she said, adding “it stinks like crazy” and at times “it smells like an actual skunk is in our yard.”

She said she and her husband plan on selling the house soon and “who wants to buy a house that smells of marijuana all the time.”

Commissioner Peggy O’Neill said she has “sympathies with the odor issue” – enough to lead her to not support the permit’s approval.

Johnson noted that part of the permit application is an exception to requirements on odor control.

The conversation drifted into legal implications, with McFarlane asking if odor constitutes a “legal taking” of property similar to a situation where the activities of one property owner causes flooding of a neighbor’s property.

When she asked if the county could be sued if cannabis odor prevented the sale of the public commenter’s property, legal staff shut the conversation down because “we don’t ask legal questions about county liability on the dais.”

The hearing was continued to the commission’s May 21 meeting.