Ron Evenich’s family has lived on Pepper Lane, just off of Pepper Road, since 1969. His property sits a few houses down from more formal vinyl signage calling for “No Pot on Pepper.”
Evenich still has the tank his family used to haul water daily during the mid-1970s drought, but at the onset of another historically dry year, his focus sits squarely on the push for nearby cannabis cultivation and the fear that a looming change to Sonoma County land use codes could make the threat even more ubiquitous. “It’s gonna be a free-for-all,” he said.
This rural enclave in the dairylands west of Petaluma has become a microcosm in the burgeoning battle between Sonoma County’s rural neighborhoods and commercial pot operators. Neighbors here have joined far-flung residents across the county in what they see as a fight for their rural existence – an effort to fend off a streamlined cannabis cultivation ordinance set to come before the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
“I think there is a lot at stake,” said Board of Supervisors Chair Lynda Hopkins, who helped develop the ordinance as part of the board’s cannabis adhoc committee. “Cannabis cultivators feel like the future of cannabis in Sonoma County is at stake. Neighbors, they feel their very quality of life and the health of the environment is at stake. I think it’s a very existential debate on both sides of the aisle.”
‘The Board of Supervisors is very pro-agriculture but they can’t keep approving projects with intensive water usage.' Steve Rogers. The proposed ordinance, which is more than two years in the making, transfers cultivation approval to the county’s Department of Agriculture through a so-called ministerial permitting process and opens up more of the county’s acreage to pot, among other changes.
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