Under threat of shutdown, Carpinteria pot growers rush to install new odor-control technology | Local News

The deadline for compliance was March 18 this year, and the board turned down all requests for extensions. At the time, fully half of the 22 cannabis growers in the valley, a Mecca for the indoor industry, were operating with no odor control systems inside their greenhouses. The “skunky” smell of pot was escaping through the open roof vents and into people’s homes.

As the March deadline came and went, the County Executive Office mailed out notices of “intent to revoke” business licenses, and hearing dates were set for appeals in Los Angeles. A sort of last-minute stampede occurred, as growers rushed to install clean-air equipment and avoid a shutdown.

Among the last to join in, the record shows, were Graham Farrar and Kyle Kazan, the owners of G&K Produce and K&G Flowers, respectively, at 3561 Foothill Rd. That seven-acre “grow” has triggered hundreds of odor complaints filed by Carpinterians with the county during the past eight years, county data show.

As of this month, county officials said, Farrar and Kazan have installed some, but not all, of the high-tech odor-control equipment they will need.

Today, only one grower is operating with no odor control inside her greenhouses, records show, and that is Heather Abdo, the owner of Bosim 1628 Management Co., a five-acre “grow” at 1628 Cravens Ln. Abdo’s appeal of the county’s notice was heard on June 1 by an administrative law judge with the Los Angeles Office of Administrative Hearings. The judge has 30 days to rule in the case.

Collin Dvorak, the owner of Pacific Grown Organics at 5892 Via Real, is scheduled for an appeals hearing on June 12: he has installed new odor-control equipment, but county officials say they have not signed off on it. Likewise, Farrar and Kazan are scheduled for an appeals hearing on June 16.

It’s a fluid situation: the hearing dates have already changed once and may change again.

Meanwhile, leaders of Concerned Carpinterians and the Santa Barbara Coalition for Responsible Cannabis, two citizens’ groups that have long favored tougher regulations for the industry, remain unimpressed by the county’s recent enforcement efforts.

Whatever the growers are doing now, it’s not working, these critics say. They say the pungent smell of pot lingers in familiar hot spots in and around Carpinteria, from the foothills to Highway 101.

“Nothing has changed: the county has totally let us down,” said Lionel Neff, a coalition board member. “The Board of Supervisors has dropped the ball. I feel like we’re all back to Square One.”

In all, cannabis is under cultivation in 118 acres of greenhouses — nearly 90 football fields’ worth — at 19 separate operations, just beyond the limits of Carpinteria.

Neff and others say they’re frustrated because many growers are passing over a state-of-the-art carbon filtration system that was developed for valley growers by the Envinity Group of the Netherlands in 2021. This technology has been proven to eliminate 84 percent of the smell of pot, on average, before it can escape through the open roof vents of a cannabis greenhouse.

The Envinity units, called “scrubbers,” cost $21,000 each and employ five stages of filtration, ionization and ultraviolet light to clean the air. In recent years, they have been installed on 41 acres of cannabis greenhouses in the valley, chiefly by members of the Van Wingerden family, at a ratio of up to 10 units per acre.

But this year, the record shows, valley growers are buying much cheaper odor-control technology, with units ranging from as low as $230 to $13,000 each.

“We’re disappointed that the growers are not using the best available equipment,” said Anna Carrillo, a member of Concerned Carpinterians who closely tracks the local cannabis industry. “We don’t know if these new machines are taking care of the odor. We don’t want to go back to filing numerous complaints that don’t get any enforcement.

“We had hoped, after eight years, that we had finally reached a solution, but we’re not there yet.”

Supervisor Roy Lee, a Carpinterian who won his seat in 2024 partly on the strength of his commitment to require state-of-the-art odor control in all of the valley’s cannabis greenhouses, said he was proud of the policy changes the board has made.

“We have taken a much more community-minded approach,” Lee said. “There will be no more excuses about installing these odor control technologies, and then our enforcement team will go out and investigate. If it doesn’t work, I will make the growers rip it all out and install a technology that does work.”

Errin Briggs, deputy director of county Planning & Development, said that planners were out in the field monitoring the smell of cannabis, particularly along greenhouse property lines, at least once and sometimes three times a week. They respond to odor complaints and make unannounced visits, Briggs said.

This month, planners started monitoring at greenhouse operations between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., when the growers typically open their roof vents wide. The warm air escapes, and so does a blast of the stench of pot. Monitoring between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. will start soon for the same reason, Briggs said.

With the help of Geosyntec, a national consulting and engineering firm with an office in Santa Barbara, the county is working with growers valley-wide to update their odor abatement plans so that the smell does not exceed the odor threshold set by the board at the greenhouse property lines, Briggs said. Some growers may be required to add more odor-control units to come into compliance, he said.

To date, Briggs said, the county has signed off on odor abatement plans at only two greenhouse operations — Autumn Brands at 3615 Foothill Rd. and Ceres Farm at 6030 Casitas Pass Rd.

“We are going through a process: It is not complete,” Briggs said. “I don’t believe we are letting the community down. We are actively working with every single operator to bring them into compliance. Some are already there and others are not.”

In 2018, the Board of Supervisors approved a permissive cannabis ordinance, triggering a massive conversion of most of the cut flower greenhouses in the valley to pot. Since then, Carpinterians have filed about 4,300 odor complaints with the county.

Residents have objected to the pungent smell of pot wafting into their homes, as well as the “laundromat” smell of the greenhouse “misting” systems. These were designed to neutralize the smell of pot after it escaped into the outside air.

As of this March 31, Briggs said, all of the “misting” systems have been shut down on board orders. But since that date, county records show, residents have logged nearly 100 complaints about the smell of pot.

In March of 2025, the board gave the growers a year to install “multi-technology carbon filtration” systems or an “equivalent technology” to help get rid of the stench that was wafting into people’s homes. The wording of the board order was carefully crafted to describe Envinity scrubbers.

But in recent months, records show, the growers have chosen carbon scrubbers that cost between $11,000 and $13,000, made by Byers Scientific Inc., a Bloomington, Ind. firm founded by Marc Byers of Summerland; air purifiers without carbon filters that cost $9,000, made by Genesis Air in Lubbock, Tex.; and carbon filters that cost $230, made by Kootenay Filter of the Netherlands.

Genesis air purifiers are widely used at casinos, airports, hospitals and schools. They rely on photocatalytic oxidation (PCO), a process in which ultraviolet light creates a chemical reaction that in turn breaks down smelly gases.

Among the cannabis growers who have installed Genesis air purifiers in the valley is Hans Brand, the owner of Autumn Brands at 3615 Foothill. He hired an engineering firm to test the Genesis units last year; they were found to reduce the smell of pot by 41 percent, on average, before it could escape through the roof vents.

Autumn Brands has seven acres of cannabis under cultivation. At the property line, there were “no perceivable cannabis odors,” the testing found.

Yet Concerned Carpinterians recently sent an email to its 350 members, saying, “Now, most days, Autumn Brands cannabis smells worse than ever.”

In an interview, Jill Stassinos, a member of the group, said she has filed several odor complaints against Autumn Brands since the Genesis purifiers were installed there in March.

“It’s been seven years of fighting the smell and getting the county to regulate it,” Stassinos said. “We thought for sure, with the threat of losing their business licenses, the growers would install Envinity scrubbers. But they continue not to be good neighbors. We used to have such a great community. It’s very sad.”

But, Briggs asked: “How do they know that it’s coming from Autumn Brands?” He noted that G&K and K&G greenhouses, located at 3561 Foothill, had lately been operating with “zero odor control” next door to Autumn Brands. Under those circumstances, Briggs said, it was “really, really unfair to Hans Brand” to pin the smell on Autumn Brands.

“We’ve done a ton of testing in that area,” he said. “We find that when we walk around Autumn Brands, the property line closest to G&K has odor, but on the other side, there’s no odor … These are the problems we’re having with people ascribing odor to a specific facility.”

With regard to the Genesis air purifiers, Briggs said: “When installed and operating correctly, they appear to be effective.”

But Autumn Brands is not the only “grow” with Genesis air purifiers that has some valley residents up in arms.

The neighbors of Valley Crest Farms, an eight-acre greenhouse operation at 5980 Casitas Pass Rd., say the smell of pot has not abated, even after the recent installation of Genesis air purifiers there, said Neff, the coalition board member. (According to Briggs, the installation is not complete.)

In 2023, the neighbors and the coalition filed a class action lawsuit against Valley Crest, seeking relief from what they described as “awful smells and noxious odors.” A trial date has been set for November in Santa Barbara Superior Court.

The owner of Valley Crest is Philip Fagundes, a resident of Parlier, and a member of the dairy farming family that produces milk for Horizon Organic in the Central Valley.

Briggs said planners have tested the air at Valley Crest on multiple occasions, but have not found odor at the property line in excess of the threshold set by the board — a “mild or transient” odor lasting three minutes.

The county still has not approved the grower’s odor abatement plan, Briggs said. Valley Crest is equipped with four Genesis air purifiers per acre, compared to eight per acre at Autumn Brands, he said.

In a move that has further rattled some valley residents, the California Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment recently recommended against the use of PCO devices for cannabis odor reduction because of safety concerns, primarily with respect to ozone, but also because of potential releases of toxic chemical byproducts.

Accordingly, the Air Pollution Control District of Santa Barbara County recommends but does not require that PCO air cleaners be equipped with carbon filters for cannabis odor control.

Genesis offers an air purifier that is equipped with carbon filters, but it is more expensive and uses more electrical power. The Carpinteria Valley growers have chosen not to purchase this model.

At the same time, the Genesis air purifier has been certified by the California Air Resources Board as a device that does not produce harmful levels of ozone. And the testing at Autumn Brands found that air samples did not exceed the health standards for ozone or toxic byproducts.

In certain industries, Briggs said, hydrocarbons in the air that are broken down by PCO units may generate ozone and toxic byproducts, but it has been shown at Autumn Brands that this does not occur in cannabis greenhouses.

“The APCD is commenting from a very conservative perspective,” Briggs said.

At G&K and K&G on Foothill, Farrar and Kazan had been proposing to install Envinity scrubbers. But they told the board in March that they wouldn’t be able to get them in place until April of 2027, primarily because of delays in installing power upgrades. The board rejected their request for an extension.

“The reason they were pursuing Envinity is that it was their impression that that was what the county was mandating,” said Larry Conlan, the growers’ attorney. “It felt like a rug was pulled by the county at the last minute.”

Now, under the threat of losing their business licenses, Farrar and Kazan are installing Byers scrubbers. They have not yet revised their odor abatement plan to reflect the change, Briggs said.

The two partners are major players in the cannabis industry in California. Their company, Glass House Brands, is vertically integrated, with greenhouse operations in Carpinteria, a massive greenhouse operation in Camarillo, a manufacturing lab in Lompoc and 10 dispensaries throughout the state.

Besides G&K and K&G, Farrar and Kazan also own Mission Health Associates at 5601 Casitas Pass Rd., where they have installed Envinity scrubbers. Their Mission Health operation also has been a frequent target of residents’ odor complaints.

Byers Scientific developed the outdoor “misting” systems that growers previously used to try to neutralize the smell of pot. The company’s marketing materials claim that Byers scrubbers have “greater than 90 percent odor control efficiency.”

The technology “performs pretty well” at Farmlane, a 14-acre “grow” at 1400 and 1540  Cravens Lane, Briggs said. The owners of Farmlane, David and Cindy Van Wingerden, installed Byers scrubbers back in 2021.

“We do have odor complaints in that area still,” Briggs said, adding that the growers’ odor abatement plan has not yet been approved. Also, he noted, Bosim is operating next door to Farmlane with no odor-control equipment in place.

Every greenhouse setting is different, and so is the ventilation and the way the odor-control technology is employed, Briggs said; plus, everyone is growing different strains of cannabis with different odor concentrations.

“The odor-control systems are all going to be a little bit different, even if they’re using the same technology,”  Briggs said.

According to the County Executive Office, if a cannabis grower loses his business license, he or she would have to shut down, install odor-control equipment and reapply; and he or she would have to reapply for state Department of Cannabis Control cultivation licenses as well — in all, a potentially lengthy and expensive process.

So far, Heather Abdo, the owner of Bosim, is the only grower in the valley to go before an administrative law judge to try to save her cannabis greenhouse operation.

On June 1, Los Angeles Judge Irina Tentser heard Abdo’s appeal of the county’s “notice of intent” to revoke her business license. The hearing was conducted by video conference and lasted more than three hours.

First off, Craig Wasserman, Abdo’s lawyer, contended that the county’s “notice of intent” to revoke Abdo’s license was not valid: he pointed to a typo in the ordinance code cited in the notice.

“This is a substantial jurisdictional defect,” Wasserman said. “It’s very serious. The mistake should have been corrected.”

Abdo testified that she had asked the county Board of Supervisors for a yearlong extension of the March deadline for installing odor-control technology; and she said the county Planning & Development Department had recommended that the board grant her request.

Abdo also told the judge that she had recently finished paying $20,000 in past-due fees to the department. She said she had submitted a revised odor abatement plan for the installation of Byers scrubbers and was waiting for the department to tell her how many she would need to buy.

Since the fall of 2023, testing performed by the county at Bosim has never detected any odor that led to a notice of violation, Abdo said.

Wasserman said Abdo had been treated with “fundamental unfairness and lack of due process.”

The judge allowed a number of documents backing Abdo’s claims to be included as evidence for her appeal, overruling objections by Deputy County Counsel Sara Brucker.

Brucker argued that the only relevant issue before the judge was Abdo’s failure to comply with the board’s March deadline.

“Appellant was fully aware of the deadline,” she said.

Questioned by Brucker, Abdo testified that she had not received or installed Byers units in her greenhouses or fully paid for them. She said financing was available from the company.

Brucker told the judge that only the CEO, and not Planning and Development, had the authority to revoke a business license. She said the board had found “insufficient grounds” to grant Abdo’s request for an extension, in part because she had delayed submitting her revised odor abatement plan to the county until this March. In any case, Brucker said, Abdo’s request was irrelevant to the hearing, “as that decision was already made.”

In response to a question from Tentser, Brucker clarified that the board order applied to all growers, even if their operations had not been cited for odor violations.

“The appellant has not installed odor-control technology as required,” she said.