Happily isolated on California's remote Humboldt County coast, Arcata has long made room in its heart for marijuana, whether grown illegally in the back woods by refugees of the Summer of Love, or legally in the back rooms of homes by medical pot patients.
But the mellow days are coming to an end. Even Arcata residents who support legalization of marijuana have become fed up with high-volume indoor growing operations that take over much-needed housing and take advantage of the state's loosely written medical marijuana law.
The neighbors of these clandestine pot farms â€" operated behind curtains, shutters and alarm systems â€" complain of the skunk-like stink of cannabis, fire hazards, rising rents, vicious guard dogs, caches of guns, illegal pesticides, roadside dumping of unwanted growing gear, and late-night visits from shady characters.
Rather than throw more cops at the problem, the City Council is fighting back in a way befitting this liberal outpost that would rather be known for its pioneering community forest and sewage treatment marsh than marijuana.
Measure I on next week's ballot would impose a 45 percent electricity tax on households â€" with medical and other exceptions â€" that use three times the amount of power a typical family home does. The measure takes aim at commercial growers who maximize production by packing homes full of high intensity lights and irrigation systems that gobble electricity and sometimes cause fires from overloaded circuits.
AP
This April 12, 2011 photo provided by Arcata Police Department shows an indoor marijuana growing operation raided by police. Fed up with the proliferation of industrial-scale indoor growing operations taking over homes in residential neighborhoods, city leaders are asking voters to to adopt a stiff new tax on excessive electricity use designed to drive large-scale growers out of town. (AP Photo/Arcata Police Department)
Close "Our hope is to drive the large-scale growing operations out of town," said Shane Brinton, a city councilman and vice mayor who has pushed the novel idea.
"I don't view it as anti-marijuana," said Brinton. "It's a land-use issue, a public safety issue, and environmental issue as well."
If it passes, it would be the first measure of its kind in the nation aimed at marijuana growers, said Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws.
The amount of electricity that would subject a resident to the tax amounts to a $700 per month bill, and is equivalent to the power used by a big chain drug store. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. reports that 633 homes â€" one in 15â€" are using that much juice, indicating they are raising pot rather than families.
If that many growers decide to absorb the tax instead of getting out of town, the tax would generate $1.2 million, or nearly 4 percent of the city's $31.7 million budget.
Located on the rainy coast 280 miles north of San Francisco, Arcata is a city of 17,000 that dates to the days when mule trains carried goods from the shipping port to the Gold Rush Country. The lumber and fishing industry here have fallen on hard times, but Humboldt State University is a foundation of the local economy, with contributions from niche manufacturers of gourmet cookies, kayaking gear and goat cheese.
Since the back-to-the-land movement of the 1970s, marijuana has been creeping into the culture and economy, and now permeates it, said Tony Silvaggio, a Humboldt State sociologist and a founder of the Humboldt Institute of Interdisciplinary Marijuana Research.
"This is the center of marijuana culture in the universe," he said. "One of the reasons is we have a very tolerant attitude toward marijuana. Word gets around, and people come here with the sole purpose to grow marijuana indoors..."
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