Arrests made on pot farms
by Lenny Roberts

To hard-working farmers, harvesting is a time when they and their families reap the results of their yearly efforts.
To law enforcement, it's just September, when the cat-and-mouse game of trying to catch the bad guys generally favors the illegal aliens who are hired to tend marijuana cultivation sites. This time, the good guys apparently won the battle.
After a couple of years of not finding any marijuana plants in forest areas north of town, the Ventura County Sheriff's Department began eradicating several cultivation sites in the Los Padres National Forest Tuesday afternoon in what authorities are describing as two unrelated incidents.
But unlike recent finds of tens of thousands of high-grade sinsemilla plants worth millions of dollars that began in 1996 when no suspects were apprehended, six people have been arrested and will be formally charged with cultivating a yet-to-be-determined amount of the illicit weed.
"For the past two days, a multiagency operation consisting of the United States Forest Service, Ventura County Narcotics Task Force, Sheriff's Department, Sheriff's Aviation Unit and Vandenberg Air Force Base personnel have been seizing marijuana plants and removing grower campsites in the area around Wheeler Gorge," said Eric Nishimoto, Sheriff's public information officer. As of Wednesday evening, there have been over 2,000 mature plants seized so far.
The location of the plants is inside the Los Padres National Forest, north and east of Wheeler Gorge.
In the Mutau Creek operation, Gilbert Ramirez, 25, and Bernardo Bueno, 46, both of Los Angeles area, have been arrested. In the Wheeler Gorge operation, three Hispanic aduts and one Hispanic juvenile have been arrested.
Prior to the Wheeler Gorge operation, the same multi-agency team found a small cultivation site in the Mutau Creek area last Sunday, when Bueno and Ramirez were allegedly found tending the marijuana. On Sunday, 85 plants were seized.
"Besides the marijuana," Nishimoto continued, "there is a significant harmful impact on the environment due to the grower campsites and the large amount of trash left."
He explained that natural water sources are being diverted or polluted, and natural vegetation has been destroyed and cleared to make room for marijuana plants.
"The introduction of noxious weeds is killing off the natural vegetation, and the extensive use of pesticides and other poisons to protect the cultivations are killing native wildlife," Nishimoto added.
Furthermore, trash generated by the cultivations, most of which is polluting and non-biodegradable, is considerable and difficult and costly to remove.
Nishimoto said more information will be forthcoming as the operation is still under way.
Before moderate amounts of pot were identified on forest land and destroyed in 1998 and 1999, three major plantations were found in the mountains surrounding Ojai in 1996 that yielded a combined payload of more than 16,000 high-grade plants. There were no pot fields reported in 1997, when it was believed that rains generated by El Niño held productivity down, and no substatial cultivation sites were reportedly discovered in 2000 or 2001.

© 2002 The Ojai Valley News

Back to the news