Pubdate: Thu, 10 Feb 2011 Source: Modesto Bee, The (CA) Copyright: 2011 The Modesto Bee Contact: http://www.modbee.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/271 Author: Jeff Jardine Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?115 (Cannabis - California) POT PLANT STANDS OUT As pot operations go, this one impressed even the agents who shut it down and arrested the six people who ran it. It wasn't just the numbers: A facility south of Modesto that could produce about $8 million worth of marijuana annually. Or the 2,000 plants seized. Or the53 pounds of dope found ready to be packed and sold at a street value of $4,000 a pound. (They could have packaged it in smaller amounts, labeled it as "value added" and charged even more. Hey, it works with baby carrots.) No, what set this pot plant apart from the rest, in Stanislaus County at least, was its sheer scope and complexity. This one had all the sophistication of a well-honed Humboldt County operation, and those folks are the experts. It had everything, including the business cliche of location, location, location, and when it comes to growing marijuana, just about anywhere will do. Drug dealers harvest the stuff in national forests and on private wild lands. In 1998, I covered the raid of a lab in an industrial park on Winmoore Way in Ceres. Five years later, authorities raided another lab in the same building, totally unrelated to the 1998 lab. At least it was zoned for light industry. More often, drug agents will find inner-city homes converted to hydroponic pot farms complete with watering and lighting systems. One of three things usually leads to the bust: Neighbors notice increased traffic in and out of the homes and at odd hours of the night. Or they'll notice the smell from the tasting room. And they might notice a huge spike in their utility bills because the pot growers were stealing their power. That's the one meriting a call to the police. The pot farm raided Monday avoided most of the pitfalls that generally expose others. "In this particular operation, they located themselves in an area so remote that it had the appearance of being defunct," said Modesto police Lt. Clinton Raymer, who heads the multijurisdictional Stanislaus Drug Enforcement Agency. "From the outside, it looked like an old chicken processing plant. They left it in run-down condition." Inside, a different story. "Where we talk about technology and advancement is where they upped the ante, stepped up their game," Raymer said. "What they'd done made it far superior to what we've seen in other places." These herbalists had separated the building into several rooms - all sheetrocked and each used for a different stage of growing. They also turned it into a two-story facility, growing the plants on the upper floor while processing and packaging the weed on the lower level. "It reminds me of an assembly line process where these guys had developed their own assembly line," Raymer said. And since pot farmers need to eat and take periodic potty breaks like anyone else ... "they had a cooking area and restrooms," Raymer said. "The only things missing were the bedrooms to sleep in." Who knows? A miniature Motel 6 might have been part of their grander plans. I mean, it's not like they ran this past the county's planning department for approval. "They were still constructing more flooring inside the property," Raymer said. "They were still building and expanding out." It had a complex irrigation system, and a skilled electrician wired the building for specialized growing lights, complete with breaker boxes and outlets, he said. "They had a 150-kilowatt diesel generator - the same-sized engine as a diesel truck," he said. Modesto Irrigation District spokeswoman Melissa Williams said150 kilowatts is enough to power 25 average-sized Modesto homes during peak summer use. "It was huge," Raymer said. Too big, as it turned out. And way too loud. In fact, the noisy diesel generator running 24-7 is what tipped off someone to the operation. But they'd thought of that, too, Raymer said. "They had another generator there, too - a newer model," he said. "That second one is basically a silent-running generator about to be up and running." Had they been able to get the silent one going before they got busted, there's no telling how long they could have continued and how much pot they could have produced. "It was a very well-concealed operation other than the (diesel) generator," he said. Investigators continued their work Wednesday by serving other search warrants outside Stanislaus County. The six defendants are from the Bay Area. All were at the pot operation when agents raided it Monday. The U.S. attorney in Fresno will have first dibs on prosecuting the case, since federal agents were involved. "If not," Raymer said, "we'll take it." The drug agency, he said, got more than a successful raid. "They find new ways to hide it, and we find new ways to uncover it," he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom