By Melinda Burns /Santa Barbara News-Press

More than seven months after the county’s March 18 deadline for installing clean-air technologies in the cannabis greenhouses of the Carpinteria Valley, the pungent smell of pot still wafts into some neighborhoods here.

It’s true, residents say, that the stink has been significantly reduced in the valley from the years when Carpinterians were filing thousands of complaints. But they say the skunky smell in “hot spots” is still driving them indoors.

The odor complaints keep coming in, but county has issued only one notice of an odor violation since March, raising questions about the thresholds that were set by the Board of Supervisors for greenhouse property lines. Meanwhile, three growers have sued the county over the new rules, and a class-action lawsuit against another grower is set for trial next month.

In the wake of the board’s deadline, all 19 of the cannabis greenhouse operations just outside the City of Carpinteria, covering 114 acres, or about 86 football fields’ worth of pot, are now equipped with clean air filters or purifiers.

Yet between March 18 and Oct. 30, county records show, Carpinterians filed 297 complaints with the county about the smell of cannabis, including 23 in the last 30 days.

“WE CAN SMELL THE STENCH FROM INSIDE OUR HOME WITH ALL WINDOWS AND DOORS CLOSED,” a resident near Meadow Circle wrote in all caps.

The problem, critics say, is that the county has allowed a number of growers to install cheap technologies that aren’t fully controlling the smell.

“Instead of a solution, it’s a compromise,” said Lionel Neff, a spokesman for the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, a citizens’ group that pushed for the mandatory clean air regulations.

“Our position has been diminished by the county. Everyone’s confused. The odor has gotten better since we first started smelling it in 2017; but has it been eliminated? No. It’s still a nuisance. Some days are better than others; but on the bad days, it’s bad.”

The coalition’s claims about ineffective technology may soon be tested in court. In 2023, the group filed a class-action lawsuit against Valley Crest Farms, an eight-acre greenhouse operation at 5980 Casitas Pass Road, seeking to remedy an alleged “ever-present noxious odor” there. The case is set for trial on Dec. 18, with Judge Donna Geck presiding.

One odor violation. Since mid-March, there’s been an apparent disconnect between what valley residents say they’re smelling and what the county has been able to verify in the field.

Using a Nasal Ranger, a hand-held device that fits over the nose, county planners have been sniffing the air at greenhouse property lines twice a week, on average, testing two or three different operations weekly since March. Yet during that time, as nearly 300 odor complaints were filed, the record shows that planners issued only one notice of an odor violation. It occurred on Sept. 2 at Valley Crest.

A violation, as defined by the supervisors, is roughly equivalent to a faint-to-mild odor of cannabis that lasts for more than three minutes at the greenhouse property line.

“I probably only send in one complaint a week: I could be sending in fourteen,” said Merrily Peebles, a La Mirada Drive resident who regularly travels on Foothill Road past G&K Produce and and K&G Flowers, a seven-acre greenhouse operation that has racked up hundreds of odor complaints over the years.

“I guess you could say I’m discouraged. The smell around these grows is a bad connotation for Carpinteria.”

The complaint record for October shows that the odor of pot was noticeable last month around La Mirada, Foothill Road, Cravens Lane and the Franciscan Village, Casitas Pass Road, El Carro Lane and Meadow Circle.

And in the foothills east of Casitas Pass Road, the smell of cannabis still drifts in the early mornings into Cate School, a private boarding and day school, especially when it’s foggy, residents say.

Driving around the valley in recent days, this reporter noted the odor of pot on Highway 101 south of the Santa Barbara Polo & Racquet Club; on Padaro Lane near the railroad tracks; on Cravens Lane; and in front of G&K and K&G on Foothill.

Peebles, Neff and other residents want county planners to test the greenhouses in and around the hot spots more frequently. They say the odor threshold set by the supervisors should be lowered nearly to zero.

“We would like the county to know that the Nasal Ranger is not showing how bothersome the smell is,” Peebles said. “They really need to monitor more often.”

Supervisor Roy Lee, a Carpinterian who won election in 2024, pledging to require clean-air technology in every cannabis greenhouse, said he plans to ask the board to lower the odor threshold early next year. That way, he said, some growers will be forced to add more air purifiers or filters, or change the brand they are using, to better control the odor of pot.

“The hammer’s coming back down again,” Lee said. “Our goal is to get rid of the smell. We will change the ordinance to reflect that. I’m incredibly frustrated that people are still suffering. There are growers who are doing the bare minimum, and that’s a problem we need to fix.”

The county cannabis odor dashboard shows the location of cannabis odor complaints and Nasal Ranger observations in the valley.

“Inferior technologies.” In requiring the installation of “multi-technology carbon filtration” at all cannabis greenhouses earlier this year, the county supervisors intentionally did not specify which brand; and they permitted growers to use an “equivalent technology.”

Valley Crest and four other “grows” in the Carpinteria Valley are using air purifiers made by Genesis Air in Lubbock, Tex. They cost about $9,000 each, do not contain carbon filters and are widely in use in airports and hospitals. They have been found to reduce the smell of pot by 41 percent, on average, inside a cannabis greenhouse.

In contrast, carbon filters, or “scrubbers,” made by the Envinity Group in the Netherlands have been proven to reduce the smell of pot inside a cannabis greenhouse by 84 percent, on average, before it can escape through hundreds of roof vents. As of 2024, Envinity units cost more than $24,000 each.

The coalition views this brand as the gold standard for clean air. But Envinity scrubbers are in place at only seven greenhouse operations in the valley, covering a third of the acreage of cannabis under cultivation, records show.

“The growers were allowed to put in inferior technologies,” Neff said. “It still smells at the property lines. With a sufficient number of Envinity scrubbers in place, there is no odor at the property line. We all know what works.”

In addition to the coalition, the plaintiffs in the Valley Crest case are William Hahn and Danielle Dall’Armi, owners of the Rose Story Farm next door to Valley Crest; and Connie Bliss Jacobson, a neighbor on Casitas Pass Road. They allege that the “thick, heavy, strong stench of cannabis” from Valley Crest has lowered their property values, driven away their tenants, and “severely” interfered with “the quiet use and enjoyment of their property.”

Valley Crest is owned by Phillip Fagundes of Parlier, Calif. Fagundes also owns Greenbrier Holdings, a cannabis manufacturing plant in Parlier that processes marijuana from Valley Crest. In court documents, his lawyers deny “each and every allegation” of the plaintiffs and state that the operation complies with “all applicable statutory laws and regulations.”

One grower settles. In contrast to Valley Crest, the owners of Ceres Farm, a nine-acre greenhouse operation next door at 6030 Casitas Pass Road, recently reached a good-faith settlement with the coalition.

Case and Alex Van Wingerden of Carpinteria were sued by the coalition along with Valley Crest, back in 2023. But after they installed 32 Envinity scrubbers at Ceres Farm, they were dismissed as defendants in the case.

Court documents show that the Van Wingerdens spent $675,000 on the scrubbers, plus $175,000 more for installation, electrical work, compliance testing and labor. In addition, the Van Wingerdens paid the plaintiffs a a lump sum of $40,000.

“These expenditures, and the extensive time commitment required to design and refine their odor abatement efforts, reflect Ceres’ significant investment in achieving compliance and reducing alleged potential odor impacts at the facility,” the August 2026 settlement agreement states.

Valley-wide, another source of frequent odor complaints — the “laundromat” smell of the “misting” systems used by growers to neutralize the smell of pot around the periphery of their greenhouses — is now a thing of the past. These systems, designed by Marc Byers of Summerland, sent a curtain of perfumed mist into the air through perforated pipes around the greenhouses rooflines; but they were frequently overwhelmed.

As of now, county officials said, all of the misting systems in the valley have been shut down.

Grower lawsuits. Last spring, the CEO asked administrative law judges in Los Angeles to revoke the business licenses of Heather Abdo, the owner of Bosim 1628 Management, a five-acre “grow” at 1628 Cravens Lane; and Farrar and Kazan, owners of G&K and K&G at 3561 Foothill, after they missed the board’s March 18 deadline for installing clean-air technology.

Abdo, Farrar and Kazan then sued the county over the new rules, alleging they were unfairly being held to a higher standard than other growers.

The CEO lost its case against Abdo on a technicality — a typo in the relevant zoning code — and later withdrew its cases against Farrar and Kazan, which also misstated the code.

Farrar and Kazan, the founders of Glass House Brands, are the largest cannabis greenhouse growers in the state, if not the country. Besides the operation on Foothill, they own Mission Health Associates, a three-acre cannabis operation at 5601 Casitas Pass Road; and 126 acres of greenhouses in Camarillo.

In June, Glass House became the first cannabis company in California and only the second in the U.S. to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange, after Trulieve Cannabis Corp. of Tallahassee, Fla.

County records show that Abdo, Farrar and Kazan recently installed Byers Scientific carbon scrubbers in their greenhouses on Cravens Lane and Foothill, respectively; but their lawsuits against the county are still pending.

Byers scrubbers cost between $11,00 and $13,000 each — about half the cost of an Envinity unit — and require more frequent changes of filters than the Envinity brand. Byers says independent testing has shown that his units can reduce the smell by 94 percent inside a cannabis greenhouse; but he has not made this study public. Byers scrubbers are now in use at six greenhouse operations in the valley.

On Nov. 2, county planners approved Farrar and Kazan’s odor control plans for G&K and K&G, the day before their annual business licenses were set to expire. The plans are designed to set the number of filters that will adequately control the smell; but residents say the Foothill operation still intermittently stinks.

As of Nov. 10, county officials said they had not approved Abdo’s draft odor control plan for Bosim. Her business license expired on Nov. 5. The County Executive Office (CEO) has said that the absence of an approved plan can be grounds for denying a license renewal — but non-renewals have been rare during eight years of commercial cannabis here.

Melinda Burns is an investigative reporter with over 40 years of experience covering topics of immigration, water, science and environment. She was previously senior reporter for the News-Press during a 21-year career from 1985-2006.

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