HomeMy WebLinkAboutLCB response letterTo: Jamie Routh and the Washington State Liquor Control Board:
Dear Jamie,
I received this email from my tenant, Clifford (CJ) Riley, and would like to respond to it. Many of the allegations are false and misleading and I would like to correct the misinformation.
Indicanna is planning to do an outdoor grow on the subject property on Gybe Ho. Rd. on Marrowstone Island in Jefferson County. I will only be a landlord, not a partner. I have 3 applications
for grows held by Lano LLC and one of them is active in Kitsap County. It appears as though there is ample plant canopy in Washington State to supply both the medical and recreational
market per the recent press release in May, so I may not be able to use one of my pending licenses on this property.
I purchased this property for two reasons. My son Dylan Wilkins and his wife Sarah Mortensen have owned the 5.13 acre parcel to the East for 20 years. Someday we may all live there
and my wife and I would be right next door to our granddaughter. But I purchased this property mostly because it met all of the requirements for legal I-502 marijuana cultivation.
I thought I could lease it in the beginning to a grower (Indicanna), and maybe one day later grow there myself. Both the LCB and Jefferson County have approved the site for marijuana
production. It has public water on site.
I checked with Jefferson County and they showed no record of wetlands. In April of 2015 we were going to bring in the power so I hired some contractors to begin to clear the land and
put in a driveway. All of a sudden there were complaints from a neighbor to the Department of Ecology, DNR (who visited the site and had no issues as long as we were not marketing
the timber), and Jefferson County, who also visited the site and had no issues. The neighbor who complained told me that she had no problem with the driveway or the clearing, but that
she just wanted to block a marijuana grow there. I worked with Ecology and agreed to restore the wetland. I bought 100 cedar trees and 60 alder trees and planted the first 50 cedar
trees myself per my restoration plan, within the 60 days period to begin planting as agreed. I emailed Rick Mraz pictures of my newly planted trees.
I was issued a fence permit by Jefferson County for constructing an 8 foot fence for Indicanna’a marijuana grow on January 22, 2016, two weeks after they received and reviewed my agreed
order with Ecology. I had given the wetland delineation report that I had done in 2015 and the restoration plan to my engineer, Michael Anderson, and I had assumed that he had given
this information to the planning department in Jefferson County (David Wayne Johnson and Joel Peterson). When I received the fence permit (which, it turns out, had us putting the fence
right in the middle of the wetland buffer) we felt we were clear to proceed with the fence. CJ Riley and I requested meetings with David Wayne Johnson and Joel Peterson and they were
kind enough to meet with us. We wanted to make certain that we did everything by the book and with their permission. Joel Peterson met with us twice for over an hour each time. Joel
told us in writing that we could proceed to clear up to 7000 square feet of land in order to put up our permitted fence. He also told us we could cut up to 5000 board feet. CJ hired
a tree feller to walk in and cut approximately 1500 feet of trees that we thought were all outside of the wetland buffer. CJ paid Michael Anderson, the engineer and surveyor, a thousand
dollars to verify and mark where the fence would go. Unfortunately for everyone, both Michael Anderson and the Jefferson
County planning department erred in their measurements of where the buffer ended and where we could put the fence. We had planned to clear part of the area inside of the fence and then
remove the road, which we had previously been unable to remove due to the wet spring weather.
I talked at length with Perry Lund from Ecology on Wednesday and he is working with me. I hired Marine Surveys, Inc. last week to work on a new restoration plan which Ecology is working
with me on now, and I paid them the first $500.00. I met them out at the site last week so they could take measurements. I may explore the option of a mitigation plan instead, and
Perry Lund referred me to a person at the Army Corp of Engineesr to discuss it with them. I will be in compliance again soon and am working diligently toward that end.
This is ONLY a matter of “not in my backyard”. There has been no clearing at all on the adjoining parcel to the East that my son Dylan and his wife Sarah own. There has been no activity
on their parcel for more than 10 years, yet Lisa Gilley and Chris Chase are fighting against legal marijuana businesses on that parcel as well. There will be no growing on either
of these parcels in wetlands but only in areas outside of buffers and approved by Jefferson County.
The neighbors have trespassed on my parcel to take pictures to send to Ecology, they have poured water and sugar into the gas tank of the excavator that was working on my parcel, and
they deflated the tires of the trailer the excavator was on. The neighbors have gone to these extreme measures and made numerous complaints ONLY to try to block legal production
of marijuana. The laws of Jefferson County and Washington State are clearly defined and we intend to follow all of them.
Thank you,
Tim Wilkins