With recreational marijuana now legal in California, cannabis is a booming agriculture sector in the state. But many who live near such operations often complain that the farms could attract crime, damage the land, and use up scarce water resources. But now, a new complaint: the smell.
It turns out they don't call it 'skunk-weed' for nothing. "As a result of the stench, residents in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, are suing to ban cannabis operations from their neighborhoods. Mendocino County, farther north, recently created zones banning cannabis cultivation — the sheriff’s deputy there says the stink is the No. 1 complaint," Thomas Fuller reports for The New York Times.
One neighbor in the town of Carpinteria, Mike Wondolowski, told Fuller: "If someone is saying, ‘Is it really that bad?" I’ll go find a bunch of skunks and every evening I’ll put them outside your window . . . It’s just brutal."
Many cannabis farmers are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on odor-control systems originally designed for garbage dumps, but neighbors' objections to the smell are only one of the problems with legal marijuana growth in California. "After nearly one year of recreational sales in California, much of the cannabis industry remains underground. Stung by taxes and voluminous paperwork, only around 5 percent of marijuana farmers in the state have licenses, according to Hezekiah Allen, the executive director of the California Growers Association, a marijuana advocacy group," Fuller reports. "Sales of legal cannabis are expected to exceed $3 billion this year, only slightly higher than medical marijuana sales from last year. Tax revenues have been lower than expected, and only about one-fifth of California cities allow sales of recreational cannabis. The dream of a fully regulated market seems years off."
from The Rural Blog https://ift.tt/2PPHJDk Californians complain about 'dead skunk' smell from pot farms - Entrepreneur Generations
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