With new federal rules just months away, local governments in rural areas are scrambling to try to get some sort of handle on where large new medical marijuana-growing operations can be located.

The new rules governing how medical marijuana is grown and distributed take effect April 1. They encourage large-scale production operations rather than smaller, home-based ones that are harder to monitor.

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The massive grow-ops are a permitted use on land in the Agricultural Land Reserve, and there’s no shortage of interest in building them.

Evergreen Medicinal Supply Inc. has already applied to Health Canada for permission to house a medical marijuana-growing operation in a building near the Pat Bay Highway in Central Saanich. The windowless concrete-block building, built on farmland at 6922 Lochside Dr., is surrounded by security fencing and located beside Michell Farm Market.

This week, members of the Juan de Fuca Electoral Area land-use committee will consider zoning bylaw amendments governing medical marijuana production facilities to be located on ALR land. The amendments call for significant setbacks — 90 metres from the front parcel line and 30 metres from the side or rear parcel lines for production facilities.

“We’re going to consider classifying them as intensive agriculture, much like a composting facility, which requires much larger setbacks than just normal agricultural use,” said Juan de Fuca director Mike Hicks.

“In my view, by classifying as intensive agriculture with the setbacks as the norm, if you want to change that, then you have to [apply for a variance]. Then you have to ask your neighbours and that’s very important to me,” Hicks said.

“If they can meet those setbacks, they’re obviously not going to harm their neighbours.”

The committee will also consider an application from Medijuana Products Ltd. to rezone a warehouse for a medical grow-operation in an industrial park at 6-7450 Butler Rd., near the new Juan de Fuca Electoral Area headquarters in Otter Point.

Hicks said applications like that in industrial zones are one-offs.

“Each one has to be spot-zoned as a medical marijuana production facility. In other words, the neighbours, even in an industrial zone, have to be OK with it,” Hicks said. “So it’s not just a blanket [approval] that in every industrial zone you can have a grow-op.”

Industrial parks are exactly where these operations should be located, said Metchosin Mayor John Ranns, who is worried about extremely large, industrial-like “factories” being built on agricultural land. His municipality is considering limiting the size of buildings that can be built for such purposes to about 5,000 square feet.

“If it’s on agricultural land, there’s not much, really, we can do about it in terms of saying yes or no. The province has said this is an agricultural endeavour and we are not even included in the decision-making process,” Ranns said.

“So what we have to do is to ensure we are not getting factories built in the middle of our ag land, we’re having to address it through our building sizes through our zoning.”

Ranns said there is interest in building a large marijuana grow-op on Sooke Road that initially would be 3,200 square feet with an intent to possibly expand to 10,000 square feet.

“The concerns for us are maintaining our ag areas as agricultural and not industrial. If you’re talking a 10,000- to 20,000-square-foot factory building, well that’s industrial and that’s probably where it should be,” Ranns said.

“We don’t want to have the agricultural viability of a place wrecked because it’s covered with a great big bunker.”

The medical marijuana-growing industry is entirely driven by Heath Canada. The municipality, police and fire departments must be notified, but there is no local input into the process of approving a medical-marijuana facility.

bcleverley@timescolonist.com