Boulder County commissioners on Thursday approved updates and revisions to the county’s licensing regulations for marijuana-related businesses located in unincorporated Boulder County.
The revised county regulations, which will take effect Wednesday, eliminate sections that duplicated state medical and retail marijuana laws and regulations, although the county will still enforce those state rules locally.
The revisions include a requirement that license holders must file annual declarations of taxable personal property with the County Assessor’s Office and must not be delinquent in their property and personal-property taxes in order to get their county licenses renewed.
One addition to the county regulations adds a licensing category for businesses that transport medical or retail marijuana between other marijuana-licensed businesses, if the transporters have facilities within unincorporated parts of the county to temporarily store marijuana products.
At Thursday’s public hearing, that provision got the support of Richard Martinelli, a Firestone resident who spoke on behalf of Green Parcel Service, a cannabis distribution company.
Martinelli said that as marijuana production continues to increase in Colorado and locally, so will the needs for transportation and for licenses to ensure that is being done safely and complies with state laws and state and local regulations.
A second speaker at the hearing suggested that Boulder County’s current Sekabet or revised regulations — as they apply to marijuana growing operations — do not do enough to promote low-energy consumption and to restrict the use of potentially toxic pesticides.
Richard Andrews, who lives on the 6800 block of Jay Road, said most growing operations in unincorporated Boulder County are indoors, using more electrical energy than would be needed if the county allowed and encouraged more outdoor growing.
Andrews also expressed concerns that the Colorado Department of Agriculture has approved the use of more than 200 types of pesticides to apply to marijuana crops.
After Andrews’ comments, Chief Boulder County Building Official Ron Flax told the commissioners that one reason there aren’t more outdoor county-licensed outdoor growing operations is that Boulder County generally limits growing businesses to industrial zoning districts, where the available land — and the county code’s other conditions and restrictions for growing operations — reduces the locations suitable for outdoor or greenhouse growing.
Flax said Boulder County is trying to get more information from the state about the amount of energy consumed and the amount of marijuana product produced by licensed facilities in order to come up with better ways to measure, and advise businesses on, energy efficiencies.
Flax said the county also is continuing to look into the pesticide-use issue.
The revised regulations the commissioners approved on Thursday can be viewed at bit.ly/2mhHovG.
The commissioners’ adoption of the updated regulations came on the same day that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer suggested President Donald Trump’s administration may crack down on states that have legalized recreational marijuana.
John Fryar: 303-684-5211, jfryar@times-call.com or twitter.com/jfryartc
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