Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
A packed audience attended Trulieve’s recent presentation to the Jefferson County Board of County Commissioners, not counting the many who participated in the meeting online.
Trulieve’s presentation came at the request of the board and took place at a special meeting on Tuesday, April 28, following a slew of recent negative publicity involving the medical marijuana facility’s alleged pollution of a nearby creek, along with longstanding complaints from surrounding property owners about noise and odors coming from the facility off U.S. Highway 27.
Representing Trulieve at the presentation were Christine Hersey, chief corporate affairs & strategy officer; Kyle Landrum, chief production officer; and Britt Stephens, of Moore Bass Consulting, Inc., a civil engineer hired by Trulieve as an outside expert.
Interim County Manager Ron Russo introduced the topic, providing a history of the Trulieve facility here, the backgrounds and expertise of the three Trulieve representatives, and a sketch of the county’s involvement with the permitting and approval of the facility vis-à-vis the building and planning departments.
The county’s involvement in the project, according to Russo’s research, began in May 2019, when Trulieve applied for a major development. The process, including the state review, was completed in 2020, when the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) found the facility to be in compliance with all state requirements and certified it.
Russo made a point of establishing several salient facts upfront. One was that once the building and planning departments had done their things in terms of permitting the facility, and the board of county commissioners had signed off on the plans, and a certificate of occupancy was issued, local involvement with the project was pretty much over.
Another was that water runoff and water and air quality issues were the domains of the state’s regulatory agencies, namely the FDEP, Suwannee River Water Management District (SRWMD) and Florida Department of Health (FDOH).
Lastly was his statement, which appeared to come as a surprise to not a few in the audience (judging from the citizens’ comments), that the county maintains an active website where residents can lodge complaints about the Trulieve facility, which complaints are forwarded to the appropriate state agency.
Commissioner Austin Hosford, for his part, made the county’s expectations of Trulieve known upfront and forthrightly, noting that the conversation between the two shouldn’t be overly complicated.
His point, Hosford said, was that county residents justifiably valued their quality of life, of which clean air and clean water were major components and nonnegotiable. The residents, moreover, had a justifiable expectation that the local government would protect their interests, he said.
“Let me be clear that this community is not anti-business,” Hosford said. “We support responsible growth. We support companies that operate the right way. But what we will not accept is a business model that comes at the expense of the people who live here. There are very real concerns, in my opinion, that have not been adequately addressed.”
The impacts of Trulieve’s operation on the area’s residents, Hosford said, were not a minor inconvenience. Rather, the impacts daily and directly impacted the residents’ lives, their health and their pocketbooks, he said.
“So when we on this board say, ‘be a good neighbor,’ it's not a suggestion,” Hosford said. “It's an expectation that we have of our businesses.”
He strongly urged the Trulieve representatives not only to listen to the residents’ concerns about the facility, but also to understand and take the concerns to heart.
“Put yourself in these people's position and ask what you would be willing to tolerate if this were happening in your community,” Hosford said. “And understand this as well. This board represents these residents and we are accountable to them, and we will continue to act accordingly if these issues are not addressed. So what I expect from Trulieve is not just words. I want to hear a clear commitment and a concrete plan that's going to fix the problems.”
Hersey in her presentation gave a snapshot of Trulieve, which she said was approaching its 10th anniversary in Florida, having started in 2016.
“Since that time we have grown from a small, scrappy start-up to one of the largest multi-state cannabis operators in the United States,” Hersey said, noting that the company overall employs more than 5,000 people, 270 of them in Jefferson County, making it the largest employer in the county.
Trulieve, she said, was responsible for serving products to hundreds of thousands of patients monthly, a responsibility that she said the company took seriously. She identified the company’s purpose as being to expand access to cannabis for patients and consumers who relied on its safe-tested and regulated products.
“We take our responsibility to our patients, our employees and our communities very seriously,” Hersey said.
She proceeded to give an overview of the industry, noting that the U.S. had more than 40 different medical marijuana programs that were all conducted at the state level, with each state having a unique design. Operations in Florida, for example, had to be vertically integrated, meaning that operators had to produce their products from seed to sale, she said.
“We have to grow, produce, cultivate, manufacture, package and dispense through our retail stores every single thing that we make,” Hersey said, adding that all the products were subject to strict regulations for advertising, marketing and packaging. Every product that Trulieve produced required inspection and approval from the FDOH and was subject to testing by a third-party lab, she said.
“We have over a thousand different product types that are approved,” she added. “And we are actually able to provide our patients with over 50,000 ounces of flower every single week consistently here in Florida. And a big part of that comes from the campus that we have here in Jefferson County.”
Landrum followed with a description of his side of the operation, which encompasses the cultivation and processing aspects of the marijuana, as well as the supply chain, research and development, construction expansion, and facilities maintenance and engineering.
He provided a history of the Jefferson County Trulieve campus, which currently consists of 13 buildings on an 84-acre property, one of the buildings being a state-of-the-art 750,000 sq. foot structure.
It was important to note, Landrum said, that the operation in Jefferson County was strictly agricultural.
“There is no processing, no refining, no finished goods production that is coming from this particular site,” he said.
He went into a detailed explanation of the many measures in place at the facility, both from a regulatory and best practices point of view, to ensure the safety of the products, the employees and the public at large.
Stephens, whose comments were accompanied with visual presentation, provided a technical overview of the facility. His testimony was given as a third-party expert at the request of Trulieve, he said, adding that his review was to ensure that the facility’s design was satisfactory and aligned with the applicable industry and state standards. His presentation largely focused on technical aspects of the stormwater system, as well as the various efforts, past and present, to improve the system and ameliorate problems.
“The original design consisted of a large, dry retention stormwater facility,” Stephens said. “Upon completion of the initial construction, however, the water management district and the engineer of record observed some changes that needed to be implemented to improve the overall system for performance.”
His presentation was laden with terms such as cfs (cubic feet per second), sand filters, discharge rates, sedimentation basins and other aspects of the operation, whose technical nature was likely foreign to the average person in the audience. His main point, however, appeared to be that the pond had been built to specification and that whatever problems SWRMD inspections had revealed, Trulieve had taken steps to correct, up to the most recent inspections this April.
He noted the system was currently under construction to make required modifications to address the latest cited deficiencies, which problems he largely attributed to blocked sand filters that were causing the system to retain more water than it was designed to hold. Once the sand filters were replaced and the basin reinstalled, the system would be back to standard operation, he said.
“Trulieve is doing its best to be a good neighbor,” Stephens asserted, adding that in terms of the most recent violations identified by the SRWMD, the facility was committed to doing whatever was necessary to remain compliant with its environmental resource permits and the applicable state laws.
Trulieve’s permit, he underscored, allowed for periodic stormwater discharges from the site, an assertion that Hosford challenged.
Was Stephens saying, Hosford asked, that Trulieve’s permit allowed it to discharge stormwater onto neighboring properties. If that was the case, Hosford said, he wanted such a statement in writing from the SWRMD or the FDEP.
“I have a hard time believing that that's something that they would say,” he said.
Stephens also pointed out that the calculations demonstrated that Trulieve’s discharge did not exceed pre-development rates and that the preliminary results from water samples taken by Trulieve at the various locations indicated that no water quality standards had been violated.
In conclusion, Stephens said, Trulieve continued to strive to be a good neighbor and address all the concerns raised.
Hosford , however, remained skeptical of Trulieve’s presentation.
“A lot of words there, but I didn't hear any plan to address the smell,” he said. “And as far as the water goes, I’ll have to see if something is done about it.”
What the board was asking, Hosford reiterated, was simple. It was for Trulieve to stop the smell and stop the water discharges into adjoining properties.
“That's all we ask,” he said. “It’s a pretty simple ask, but I didn't hear any concrete answers to the problems that we spoke about.”
The resounding message from members of the public were likewise skeptical and largely critical of Trulieve, with the tones ranging from mild to hostile. A few acknowledged Trulieve’s efforts to correct the problem and applauded it being the county’s largest employer. Regardless, it was their point, it didn't give the company the right to discharge runoff water into neighboring properties or produce noise and foul odors. Good neighbors were as good neighbors did, was their message.
“I would like them to be a good neighbor and eliminate the smell and the water runoff, even if they are meeting the state-mandated requirements, because obviously it's not enough,” said one woman.
Several wondered how it was that the pond could be overflowing with rainwater when Florida was in the grip of one of its worst droughts in decades. If the pond was overflowing now, what would happen when the rainy season came, they asked.
One gentleman, who identified himself as a longtime contractor, took note of Stephens’ remark that the ponds had required modifications because they hadn’t been constructed correctly at the start.
“I know about regulations and water runoff, and what I hear by their own testimony is that they're not maintaining these ponds correctly,” this individual said.
His, he added, was a longtime experience with the design of ponds, having built many across the state. This was why, he said, he had a concern with Trulieve having changed the pond’s function from one of retention to one of detention. Retention, he said, required more ponds and filters to ensure that the water released was as clean as possible. Whereas detention ponds, he said, generally didn’t require near as much processing of the water.
“I'm not sure how this change was made or why,” the individual said. “But I can tell you that over a period of time, that's going to save them a lot of money on maintenance that they would have to do if they were to maintain the water according to regulations.”
Others complained about the noise and “skunk-like odor” emitting from the facility, which they said deteriorated the enjoyment of their properties and furthermore reduced their property values. At least one individual objected to Trulieve calling its facility a campus, suggesting such was akin to putting lipstick on a pig to disguise its fundamental nature.
Hosford had the last word, pressing Trulieve to make a commitment to correct the cited problems.
“You’ve heard it from these folks,” Hosford said. “Their property values have dropped. Can you imagine putting your life investment into a house to retire in the country and then you get into something like this and now you can't even sell your house and get away from it? That's a nightmare. I think anybody in this room would agree with that. So I appreciate you saying that you're going to look into options. But I've heard that before and it’s come to nothing. So I would really appreciate it if you came back with some kind of plan that you are doing something different, besides looking at options. Bring us a plan. Bring us some ideas.”
Hersey tentatively agreed to have Trulieve pay for water tests of the wells of area property owners. She also indicated that she would return to the commission's May 21 meeting, at which representatives of the SRWMD and FDEP are expected to testify.