Pubdate: Thu, 21 Sep 2000
Source: Fresno Bee, The (CA)
Copyright: 2000 The Fresno Bee
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Author: Charles McCarthy, The Fresno Bee

MADERA CULTIVATES MILLIONS IN POT HAUL

8,000-plus plants worth $35 million are ripped out near Oakhurst.

MADERA -- Madera County law enforcement authorities seized $35 million 
worth of marijuana plants this week, continuing a summerlong push against 
pot farms in the county's mountainous areas.

Sheriff John P. Anderson said Wednesday that deputies and the county's 
Narcotics Enforcement Team raided marijuana gardens Monday in the Oakhurst 
area.

The plants were seized just off Sky Ranch Road and in the Texas Flat area 
near Fresno Dome.

More than 8,000 plants up to 10 feet tall were ripped out and destroyed, 
sheriff's spokeswoman Rita Valdivia said.

Tuesday, the team reported finding and destroying 6,500 more of the illegal 
plants east of North Fork in the Pekinpah area.

"There's some big gardens and some big plants," Anderson said.

Using federal figures for estimating the street value of marijuana plants, 
an estimated $125 million worth of the illegal hemp has been seized and 
destroyed this summer in Madera County.

The volume of those plants has convinced Anderson that the gardens in the 
Sierra are commercial operations.

"You don't have 7,000 plants just for local consumption or personal 
consumption," he said. "These people are criminals."

Most of the Madera County marijuana farms have been on public land, so the 
deputies and narcotics team didn't need search warrants, Anderson said.

Of the seven people arrested as suspected pot farmers this summer, all but 
two were Mexican nationals, Anderson said.

A man fatally shot in a raid above Ahwahnee when deputies said he aimed a 
gun at them has been identified as being from Mexico.

"The guy that they arrested last week, he didn't even know where he was," 
Anderson said. "Someone took him up there and dumped him. He asked me what 
county we were in."

A suspect identified as Augustine Maldonado Sanchez, 56, of Mexico, was 
arrested without incident at one of the marijuana gardens raided this week, 
Valdivia said.

Anderson said the raids have followed a series of aerial sweeps of the 
mountain area.

The sweeps located several suspicious gardens of what appeared to be 
cultivated marijuana plants.
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