A Blossoming Dispute Over Greenhouses
Hundreds of thousands of orchids, daisies, mums and roses bloom in an explosion of colors inside the greenhouses of the Carpinteria Valley.
But outside, many residents see the giant hothouses as a white blight eating up the land in south Santa Barbara County.
Greenhouses have multiplied on the fringes of this beach city, with glass or plastic now covering 330 acres of prime farmland in a tiny valley wedged between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
“Greenhouses are certainly not my favorite thing to look at,” said Bill Horton, a retired electrical engineering professor who grows avocados, persimmons and limes in the foothills.
“It’s not so wonderful when they burn lights all night to force the blooms either,” he said. “We get the glare off them during the day and light at night. When you fly over Carpinteria at night, it looks like downtown L.A.”
The growing dispute over greenhouse expansion has spilled into court. The battle pits longtime residents who want limits on hothouses against Dutch flower producers who have grown under glass for generations.
Carpinteria greenhouses generate top quality products for florists across the United States and Canada. The blossoms cover Rose Parade floats year after year.
But greenhouses are ugly on the outside. And ugly isn’t popular in this beachfront bedroom community, where the view is everything to residents, and condominiums start at $250,000 while houses in the foothills can top $1 million.
“What really bothers them is how we look from the hills, and that’s not a valid reason to stop us,” said Ed Van Wingerden, 43, owner of Ever-Bloom. He grows every color of Gerbera daisy imaginable in a high-tech environment where pesticides, water and sunlight are strictly controlled under 15 acres of glass.
The Van Wingerden family is credited--or blamed, depending on your perspective--for much of the greenhouse expansion. In 1967, 33 family members moved to Carpinteria from Naaldwijk, Netherlands. Other Dutch families soon followed. Van Wingerden means “of the vine,” and the family has grown under glass for six generations.
Ed Van Wingerden said a greenhouse grower who spends $700,000 to $1 million per acre to start a business is committed and is a better neighbor than condos and housing tracts.
“We can stop development,” he said. “Just because the government is anti-growth now doesn’t mean the pendulum won’t swing back. But if there is something like greenhouses in place, the pendulum won’t swing to housing tracts. The land is safe, safer than in open fields.”
Vera Bensen, a 46-year valley resident, would hardly describe the white behemoths that can be two or three stories high as safe. “They get away with so much because they’re considered agriculture. They’re more like industry than agriculture,” she said.
Carpinteria may be an extreme example, but other areas are grappling with similar issues, as greenhouses for flowers, vegetables, seedlings and bulbs have been squeezed out of urban areas and moved to California’s coast.
Greenhouses have sprouted in nearby Goleta, Nipomo in San Luis Obispo County, Half Moon Bay in San Mateo County and coastal areas of Humboldt County.
The California Coastal Commission is committed to protecting farming in the coastal zone. But no amount of regulation can control soaring land prices. In the Carpinteria Valley, land zoned for agriculture now costs $100,000 an acre.
“In these coastal areas where greenhouses are prominent, there are no other uses for the land besides agriculture and no other agriculture which pays like greenhouses,” said John Gamper, director of taxation and land use for the California Farm Bureau.
A group of citizens called the Carpinteria Valley Assn. went to court last year alleging that Santa Barbara County continued to approve greenhouses despite a 17-year-old state mandate to study the cumulative impact of the structures on the city of 19,000.
To settle the suit, the county agreed to a tougher permitting process. A proposal for greenhouse limits and corridors will now face hearings and return to the Coastal Commission later this year.
Carl Stucky, president of the Carpinteria Valley Assn., said the greenhouse corridor proposal is a start. But he said the county is ignoring concerns about the impact of 900 lower-income greenhouse employees on the community’s housing and schools, and about pesticide runoff and truck traffic.
Stucky is a ranch manager who specializes in orchards, and he challenges the notion that only greenhouses can make a profit on the coast.
“When you look at total return on capital, I don’t believe greenhouses are doing better than open field,” he said as he stood in the foothills overlooking the valley, with the Channel Islands in the distance.
“The land here is based on lifestyle value, on what I call Hollywood director value. It’s never been all about the bottom line. It’s about wanting to be in Carpinteria. If you want to be a grower anywhere, you would want to be a grower here.”
But Case Van Wingerden Jr. and other greenhouse growers contend that there is a hidden agenda for many residents who don’t like the low-income flower cutters, many of whom are Mexican American. “There is a racial issue here,” he said.
Carpinteria Mayor Brad Stein disputes any claims of racism. “That’s the spin they try to put on it, but it’s not fair,” he said.
Stein lives on a street where he says two semitrucks per minute go by some days to deliver goods or retrieve flowers from the nurseries.
“The reality is we’re not trying to run off the greenhouses,” he said. “We’re just trying to see that the whole valley doesn’t get cemented over.”
