The Licensing of Commercial Cannabis in Mendocino County Project Environmental Impact Report (EIR)

The Department of Cannabis Control (DCC) and Mendocino County continue to work in partnership to support provisional cultivation licensees’ transition to annual licensure and support the issuance of annual licenses for new cultivation within the County.   

In accordance with the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the DCC, as Lead Agency, certified the EIR for the Licensing of Commercial Cannabis Cultivation in Mendocino County on October 17, 2024. The DCC currently issues commercial cannabis cultivation licenses under Division 10 of the Business and Professions Code and California Code of Regulations, title 4, division 19.

All legal commercial cannabis activity must be conducted pursuant to state licensing requirements. As of the April 2023, there were 623 provisionally licensed commercial cannabis cultivation sites, 23 of which have associated cannabis distribution transport-only operations, within the unincorporated areas of Mendocino County that may operate under the Medicinal and Adult-Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act while they actively and diligently purse all requirements for annual licensure. The EIR programmatically evaluates the environmental impacts of the DCC’s annual licensing of such provisionally licensed commercial cannabis operations in the County, as well as the environmental impacts of future licensed commercial cannabis operations. DCC continues to review individual applications for licensure and will use the EIR to streamline site-specific review as applicable under CEQA to enable the issuance of annual licenses.

For more information on EIR, please visit The Licensing of Commercial Cannabis in Mendocino County Project Environmental Impact Report - Department of Cannabis Control

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