Authorities in Santa Barbara county found a nearby site growing nearly 30,000 marijuana plants, which has a street value of approximately $90 million.
In a recent statement, the United States Forest Service said that site has been used by members of Mexican drug cartels, who commonly grow marijuana crops in remote forested areas.
Oftentimes, workers who tend these crops camp out near the site. Sheriff Bill Brown from Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department said that these workers probably caused the fire. Officials found a camp stove in Los Padres National Forest, which is where the fire started. Also found near the campsite was an AK-47 assault rifle. In July, the sheriff's office found another marijuana farm with 113,000 plants near the previous campsite.
In Santa Barbara County, around 225,000 plants have been seized, with an estimated street value of $675 million.
Many clandestine marijuana operations such as the ones recently found usually are well organized, tended, and irrigated, says officials. Sheriff Brown said that marijuana operations are responsible for three or four fires every year and that people who maintain these operations also damage the environment by using harmful chemicals and leaving behind trash. Furthermore, he added that the damages sometime take several years to clean up.
Last week, authorities found a marijuana farm with 32,000 plants near Hidden Villa in Los Altos Hills.
On Aug. 18, San Francisco Supervisor Carmen Chu called a hearing on “grow houses.” A grow house is a residential house or apartment that has been stripped bare and used for growing marijuana plants indoors. These indoor marijuana farms seem to be burgeoning in the Sunset District. California is the largest marijuana producing state in the U.S.
Recently, 69 plantations were discovered in Fresno County since February, with about 318,000 plants seized. Gil Kerlikowske, the head of Office of National Drug Control Policy in July said, "Drug trafficking organizations have been operating on public lands to cultivate marijuana, with serious consequences for the environment and public safety.”
