Given current demands and climate and supply uncertainties, can Sonoma County support another water intensive industry? 

Cannabis irrigation water demand is many times higher than a single-family house or even wine grapes. Given current demands and climate and supply uncertainties, can Sonoma County support another water intensive industry? 

The Baseline Water Analyses that will underpin the General Plan Updates as well as many future Environmental Impact Reports must factor in the 600,000 water users served by Sonoma Water, not to mention new State-mandated housing that the county will be required to build. In addition, Sonoma County has 60K acres of vineyards and has already permitted about 500 winery facilities, which draw heavily on surface and groundwater water supplies. 

The fact that Permit Sonoma issued winery permits that blew through the protections and mitigations set in the 2008 General Plan Environmental Impact Report, which assumed only 230 water-intensive wineries by 2020, again illustrates that County land use decisions do not comply with advanced plans or known forecasts. 

In their assessments of cannabis cultivation, both Sonoma and Napa counties estimated water demand by one acre of cannabis cultivation. The Sonoma (977 k gallons) and Napa (at 1.1 M gallons) estimates average out to an estimated demand of about one (1 M) million/ gallons per acre per year per harvest, though mixed light and indoor cultivation may have 2-3 harvests per year.  Comparing cannabis cultivation with grape growing, shows that outdoor cannabis cultivation uses about six (6) times more water per harvest than even the high-end assumption for wine grape irrigation demand.

For about a decade, Sonoma County has cultivated about 60,000 acres of grapes with acreage staying stable, though the location of vineyard development is moving into hillsides as new residential and commercial development replaces grapes in our Ag valleys. Thus, vineyard demand alone is about 9.7 M gallons, when using the high-end assumption for wine grape irrigation of 162K gallons per acre.

‍However, the water requirements of wineries and wine production -- which Sonoma has been permitting enthusiastically -- are significantly higher. A December, 2021 Gazette article, “The Water Footprint of Wine,” quotes statistics from sources such as the “water footprint network” ranging from 874 to 940 gallons of water required to produce 1 gallon of wine, and there is about 2.5 gallons/ case. These now also represent an "existing use" that will require the county to allocate scarce resources to.

As we head into the 3 year of a drought and are once again discussing the need for curtailments of water rights from residents and farmers alike, it seems unconscionable that our county officials appear to be embracing outdoor cannabis cultivation with little regard to our ability to meet its needs while continuing to support these existing uses. In the end, we may end up asking our farmers and wine growers to fallow their fields and wineries to relocate to conserve water while letting cannabis cultivation proliferate unchecked.

Napa County Supervisors recognized their commitments to the wine and tourism industries and decided to limit cannabis to indoor cultivation on industrial zoned land, sparing the groundwater resources in its Ag Preserve and watersheds.  Like Napa, the Neighborhood Coalition advocates for indoor cannabis operations located in industrial/commercial zones versus outdoor cannabis operations that draw on groundwater supplies and may disrupt tourist-oriented businesses

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