Eight years after county opened the door wide to the cannabis industry, the Board of Supervisors gave notice Tuesday that it was pulling in the welcome mat.
Just a year ago, the board ordered all greenhouse growers, most of them in the Carpinteria Valley, to get “multi-technology carbon filtration,” commonly called “scrubbers” — or some “equivalent technology” — up and running inside their greenhouses by March 18, 2026.
If they missed the deadline, the growers risked losing their business licenses, the supervisors said. Scrubbers have proven to help prevent the “skunky” smell of pot from escaping through the vents on greenhouse roofs into urban neighborhoods.
But the board gave the growers had an out: If they encountered supply chain delays or problems with power upgrades, they could make a one-time request for a deadline extension of up to 12 months.
Flash forward to this Tuesday, and only 11 out of 22 growers in the valley had met the deadline, according to a report to the board from county Planning & Development. Three more were expected to meet the deadline, the report said, and eight were requesting 12-month extensions.
But the board said no. Voting 4-1 in Santa Maria, the supervisors flatly denied all eight requests, even tossing out some two- and six-month extensions that county planners were recommending.
The first to say, “Enough is enough,” was Supervisor Roy Lee of Carpinteria. Since 2018, when an earlier board approved an industry-friendly cannabis ordinance, paving the way for the valley to become a Mecca for commercial pot, Carpinterians have filed more than 4,000 odor complaints with the county. None of them have been enforced.
In 2024, Lee’s support for scrubbers helped him win his seat on the board. And on Tuesday, he said he didn’t think the growers had made “an honest effort” to install scrubbers.
“What I’m hearing today is that decisions were made late, projects started really late and engineering started even later,” Lee said. “These are self-imposed delays .. Every operator knew the rules and knew the timeline … At some point, deadlines have to mean something, and if we keep pushing back on them, the only people paying are the people living in my community … Enough is enough, that’s how I feel.”
‘They didn’t listen‘
The greenhouse operations of the eight growers requesting extensions cover 39 acres greenhouse cannabis, or about a third of the 115 acres — about 87 football fields’ worth — now under cultivation in the valley.
Supervisor Laura Capps, who represents much of the Goleta Valley, noted that most of the growers asking for extensions had signed a voluntary pact in 2021 with the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, a citizens’ advocacy group, promising to install “best available odor control technologies” in exchange for the coalition’s promise to put lawsuits on hold.
When the pact fell through two years later, Capps said, she and then-Supervisor Bob Nelson starting working on a mandate for scrubbers and warned the growers that it was coming. As of late 2022, an expensive scrubber developed in the Netherlands by the Envinity Group had been shown to eliminate 84 percent of the smell of cannabis inside a valley greenhouse, on average.
“The industry didn’t listen,” Capps said. “We did meetings. There was an election. They didn’t listen .. . And instead of putting money into the technology back then, they started figuring out ‘how can we delay this, how can we get out of this, how can we look into cheaper versions’?”
“We’re here to deliver for people,” she said, adding that the smell of pot has been “a nightmare for some people who Supervisor Lee represents … so, I support Supervisor Lee.”
Nelson, now the board chair, representing a district that includes Orcutt and portions of the wine country west of Buellton, said he was disappointed that the growers didn’t contact him to try to work out a solution until right before last year’s vote on scrubbers. And again this week, he said, they called him at 4 p.m. on Monday.
“To me, it’s a game of delay,” Nelson said.
Supervisor Joan Hartmann said she was familiar with the smell of cannabis under cultivation in open fields in her district, which includes the Santa Ynez Valley and portions west of Buellton.
“I just can’t face the people of Carpinteria, having lived with what the smell is,” Hartmann said. “I have to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ The burden of proof now goes to the growers.”
And it was the eight growers whom Supervisor Steve Lavagnino had in mind when he cast the sole “No” vote on Tuesday, saying they should be granted a few more months to install new odor-control systems. Two growers told the board they had each spent about $800,000 on the equipment alone.
Finally, Lavagnino reminded his colleagues that the industry had brought the county $60 million in tax revenues to date.
“It’s tough for me to say to somebody who has already bought the equipment, ‘Lay off employees and we don’t want the revenue,’”Lavagnino said.
Looking over at Lee, he added, “I know you’re standing up for your community. I’m just in a different spot on this one … My biggest fear is, all these people are going to install these things, and the neighbors are going to tell you it still stinks.”
What comes next
In specific “findings” backing up their “no” vote, the board cited the growers’ months-long delays in submitting odor control plans to Planning & Development and their failure to order, purchase and install the necessary equipment “in an expeditious manner.”
Under county rules, the County Executive Office can revoke or deny the business licenses of any grower who fails to submit an odor control plan to Planning & Development, get it approved, install scrubbers or an equivalent technology and have them operational by this March 31.
Growers can appeal revocations or denials to the Los Angeles Office of Administrative Hearings, a quasi-judicial state tribunal that handles such disputes. The appeals must be heard within 60 days.
Meanwhile, seven of the eight growers requesting extensions are proposing models other than Envinity scrubbers, setting the stage for future disputes over which technology works best to get rid of the smell of pot.
At two operations — CP1 Supply Systems at 4505 Foothill and Emmawood at 5888 Via Real — Tristan Strauss, the owner, is currently installing odor-control systems manufactured by Genesis Air Inc. of Lubbock, Tex. Strauss is the CEO of Headwaters, a bulk cannabis supply company in California.
Eric Edwards, an attorney for Headwaters, told the board that the company chose a Genesis product in part because it was produced in the U.S. and would not be subject to the present tariffs on imported goods.
“This is not a case of an operator trying to avoid or delay compliance,” he said. “It’s simply taking longer than we had hoped … Our goal was to select something that we could easily install and didn’t require extensive electrical upgrades.”
And at Valley Crest Farms, a greenhouse operation at 5980 Casitas Pass Road that is embroiled in a class-action lawsuit filed by the coalition, 45 Genesis Air purifiers have been installed, or nine more than the 36 recommended by the company’s engineers, Benjamin Warner, a representative for the owner, Philip Fagundes of Parlier, Calif., told the board.
A ‘red flag’?
But during a test last summer at Autumn Brands, owned by Hans Brand at 3615 Foothill, the Genesis purifiers were shown to remove only 41 percent of the smell of pot inside a greenhouse, on average. These devices cost $9,000 each.
Capps said the board had written the scrubber mandate with the Envinity model in mind. As of 2024, they cost $24,000 each. Envinity scrubbers have been installed in seven greenhouse operations in the valley, at a ratio of up to 10 per acre.
The Genesis Air purifiers, Capps said, are just “half as good … You pay for what you get.”
The Genesis model relies on photocatalytic oxidation (PCO), a process in which ultraviolet light creates a chemical reaction that in turn breaks down smelly gases.
Capps noted that the state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment has recommended against the use of PCO devices for cannabis odor reduction because of safety concerns, primarily ozone formation. As a result, the Air Pollution Control District of Santa Barbara County recommends but does not require that PCO units be equipped with carbon filters for cannabis odor control.
On Tuesday, Planning & Development officials told the board that tests of the Genesis devices in the valley without carbon filters did not detect ozone at anywhere near the levels that are harmful to humans. Just this week, they said, Planning & Development approved Hans Brand’s odor control plan for the Genesis devices that are now online at Autumn Brands.
Capps responded that a technology that is “equivalent” to carbon filtration “does not mean something that comes with a red flag from a state agency.”
In his remarks to the board, Hans Brand defended his choice.
“We feel very confident that the Genesis is working,” he said. “We did test for ozone, and there’s nothing there. It’s not dangerous … It works without the carbon … I don’t like to be called out about a technology that is good, that is proven, that is safe, that is legal.”
As his two minutes at the podium ran out, Brand said to Lee, “You should have talked to me.”
Byers is back
Meanwhile, at three operations — Primetime Farms at 5554 Casitas Pass; New Generation Farms and Blue Whale Agriculture at 5775 Casitas Pass; and CKC and Life Remedy farms at 5138 Foothill — the Pacific Dutch Group has signed a contract to purchase carbon filtration systems sold by Byers Scientific, a Bloomington, Ind. firm that was founded by Marc Byers of Summerland, according to the board report and Tadd McKenzie, the group’s president.
Back in 2021, these were the first carbon filtration systems to be installed in cannabis greenhouses — at what is now Farmlane, at 1400 and 1540 Cravens Lane.
At Bosim 1628 Management Co., a greenhouse operation at 1628 Cravens Lane, the owner, Howard Keum of Las Vegas, also is proposing to install Byers scrubbers. Keum has not yet ordered them because of delays in power upgrades, the board report shows.
Envinity scrubbers are proposed at only one operation — G&K Produce and K&G Flowers at 3561 Foothill, owned by Graham Farrar and Kyle Kazan. County records show that these greenhouses have been the No. 1 target of residential odor complaints. The growers have not submitted an odor control plan to the county for scrubbers.
Jared Ficker, a consultant for Farrar and Kazan, said they had encountered significant delays in power upgrades for the Envinity models. According to the board report, the scrubbers have not yet been ordered.
“We were holding out that another technology might emerge that didn’t require as much power,” Ficker told the board. “ … We’re kind of stuck with a technology we can’t totally execute, even though it’s highly desired.”
In letters and public comments, Carpinterians asked the board to deny all extension requests and require Envinity scrubbers. They said they were tired of filing complaints about the smell of pot that plagues their community in hot spots from the beaches to the foothills.
“We’re still dealing with the horrible, horrible smell,” said Danielle Hahn, the co-owner of the Rose Story Farm and a plaintiff in the lawsuit against Valley Crest. “Nobody should have to live like this. The odor is constant.”
Tuesday’s three-hour hearing came at the end of a 10-hour day for the supervisors, ending in the evening hours.
“The board looked at the plight of the citizens of Carpinteria and they did the right thing,” said Lionel Neff, a coalition board member. “Finally, the county came through.”
Melinda Burns, a former senior writer for the legacy Santa Barbara News-Press, is an investigative reporter with 40 years of experience covering immigration, water, science and the environment.
