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There are often more staff than public speakers at regular Wednesday morning meetings of the Torrance County Commission. But on Oct. 9, more than three dozen residents made the trek to the commission chambers in Estancia to plead for commissioners to put a pause on the explosive growth of cannabis greenhouse projects quickly replacing the Estancia Valley’s more traditional agricultural uses.
For more than four hours, commissioners heard appeals from two prospective cannabis operators who argued that their operations would be similar to others previously approved by the county.
In the first hearing, Minyong Chen had applied for a conditional zoning approval to build a greenhouse-based outdoor cannabis production operation off of Riley Road near Estancia.
Riley Road neighbors, including Hayley Malchak, were the most vocal in their opposition.
“We are overrun and oversaturated by cannabis right now. If we don’t take the time to pause and think… then how do we know we aren’t opening our doors to more organized crime or trafficking, which is what we’ve done so far,” Malchak told commissioners.
Malchak and others asked commissioners to pause future zoning applications until a more thorough ordinance could be considered.
Commissioner Ryan Schwebach seemed open to that idea. He asked whether the county should pause until the state updates the cannabis law. The state’s cannabis law, passed and signed into law by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham in 2021, requires counties to treat cannabis “like corn or alfalfa,” County Attorney Michael Garcia said. Neither the governor nor the Legislature’s interim committees have drafted proposed bills to amend cannabis laws so far, though any legislator could try.
Other speakers also asked commissioners to take their own action on the local level.
“Santa Fe County has an entire chapter related to cannabis in their ordinances,” Malchak said.
Torrance County’s current ordinance treats cannabis like most other agricultural uses so long as concerns over light pollution and odor are addressed.
Other speakers raised concerns about the impact cannabis farms would have on already depleting water resources in the basin, though water use is regulated by the state engineer, not the county commission.
“This is the first time one of these appeals has come to the commission,” Commissioner Kevin McCall said. He asked county staff whether conditions could be added by the commission to abate those concerns. County Attorney Michael Garcia told commissioners that they could add conditions for “light, odor and even setbacks” to the application. But in the end, none of the commissioners proposed modifications or conditions.
Instead, Schwebach made a motion to uphold the board’s denial. Commissioners McCall and Sam Schropp quickly agreed.
In the matter of the second application to build a facility on Akin Farm Road, Ping Chen speaking on behalf of the applicant, Quick Grow LLC, told commissioners that the applicant was no longer applying to install hoop houses and would instead build eight 6,000-square-foot buildings to start — totaling 48,000 square feet. After almost an hour of deliberations and questions about technical aspects, commissioners continued the hearing to the next commission meeting on Oct. 23 to give the applicants time to provide specific details relating to how the operation would operate.
Schropp recused himself from the Akin Farm Road hearing because the commission’s decision could impact nearby property he owns.
Editor’s Note: The Independent’s publisher/owner Pat Davis is also the owner of Weeds, LLC, a regulation consulting firm that provided assistance to one of the applicants in this story.
