Despite Clallam County officials’ recent adoption of an interim ordinance establishing controls for legalized recreational marijuana (I-502) within the county for the next six months, a conditional use permit was approved for a tier 1 recreational marijuana grow at 2564 Hooker Road.

Under the temporary controls, the approved request would have failed the development standards given the property’s zoning of Rural Low (R5), but Clallam County Hearing Examiner Mark Nichols was able to approve the CUP on Thursday, Oct. 23, because the applicant is one of eight submitted prior to the interim ordinance’s adoption on Oct. 7.

Seven I-502 applicants seeking conditional use permits unaffected by the interim ordinance remain.

“I am pleased with the decision,” said David Burns, I-502 production and processing licensee and applicant. “I think he (Nichols) did a good job at looking at the facts.”

Burns is hopeful to be able to produce product for local recreational marijuana retailers within the next four months, but admits he is probably being a bit optimistic.

A tier 1 production limits a producer to grow less than 2,000 square feet of recreational marijuana. At his 4.88-acre piece of property on Hooker Road, Burns plans to utilize an existing 800-square-foot barn to grow his indoor crop and anticipates maintaining about 50 plants.

“I have had people asking me if I had any product yet,” Burns said. “I have an advantage with an indoor grow because it is a controlled environment.”

Prior to approval

Following his retirement from a 36-year career as a land use planner where he most recently worked in Lacey, Burns, founder of StarCrisp Farm LLC, has been pushing to get a conditional use permit for growing legalized marijuana in Clallam County since March.

“I saw this opportunity (legalized recreational marijuana) and wanted to take advantage it,” Burns said.

Although Burns does not live on Hooker Road, both he and his wife “intend to build a home on the subject property to retire there and to run the business as a home-based hobby farm,” Burns wrote in his conditional use permit application.

Burns first submitted an application for a tier 2 outdoor grow in Clallam County, but withdrew the application because of community push-back and concerns associated with water usage and the permitting process. Though by July Burns had resubmitted a application to the Department of Community Development after opting to downscale and move the whole operation indoors.

Concerns persist

If Burns had not applied prior to Clallam County Board of Commissioners’ adoption of Ordinance 896, he would not have been granted a conditional use permit because of development standards that require a minimum parcel size of 15 acres and the property owners to reside on the property.

Although Burns is able to move forward with his tier 1 grow on Hooker Road, he said, “It’s sad that this (establishing local controls for I-502) did not get taken to the planning commission a year and a half ago.”

“I think they (county officials) are moving in the right direction, but it has taken them a while,” Burns said.

But, for those neighboring Burns’ property, like Diana Smith, she feels as though she has been “mugged by the law,” she said.

“My quality of life is what has been impacted,” Smith said. “Even though property values will also go down, for me it isn’t about the money, but my quality of life.”

Among Smith’s concerns is the amount of water available on the property. Although officials with the Department of Ecology have granted permission for indoor water use and outdoor irrigation for up to a half acre, the property is within the area included in the Dungeness Water Rule, raising a red flag for Smith.

“It remains to be seen whether water is really there,” Smith said.

Additionally, Martha Vaughan, an immediate neighbor to Burns’ property, is “tired of the misrepresentation” throughout the hearing and application process, she said.

“They (county officials) keep referring to my home as a ‘commercial rental’ but it is my home with my things and we live there part-time,” Vaughan said. “I love Sequim, but now I’m looking at it like what are we going to do? Now I have to spend my hard earned money and put it toward saying ‘no’ this is not right.”

Vaughan owns a log home known as The Call of the Wild Lodge, which she rents out part-time as a vacation rental. After going through the conditional permitting process herself in December 2012 and being denied a conditional use permit for using her home as a wedding venue, Vaughan wrote in a letter to county officials in opposition of Burns’ tier 1 grow proposal, that she “did not appeal” because she understood “there would be a better place to have our weddings. Dave Burns needs to understand that he needs to find a more fitting location for a drug-pot growing operation.”

The Clallam County Planning Commission and staff with the Department of Community Development are working toward permanent controls for I-502 activity within the county.

Reach Alana Linderoth at alinderoth@sequimgazette.com.