Point Reyes Light - September 26, 2002

Pot plantation found in National Seashore

By Andrea Blum

What may have been the single biggest marijuana bust in West Marin history began at 9 a.m. last Thursday when a hiker in the Point Reyes National Seashore near Dogtown spotted a marijuana plantation.

Along with 2,750 marijuana plants, the plantation included ammunition, water-storage ponds, thousands of feet of piping, dams and an encampment complete with treehouse, kitchen, bedding, and laundry area.

The hiker, who knew rangers a decade ago had found marijuana growing in the same location, suddenly saw a man in flight. Plumbing and other debris from that earlier pot farm were still lying around, and the hiker "immediately left the location because he feared for his safety," Daniel Tuey, a special agent for the US Drug Enforcement Agency, later reported in a US District Court filing.

The hiker notified the Park Service rangers, who in turn notified the DEA.

Armed with special tactical equipment, including night-vision goggles and lasers, rangers from the National Seashore spent Thursday night staking out the site, which was a half mile west of Highway 1.

After a long night, Park Service rangers and special agents at 6 a.m. Friday morning succeeded in arresting two suspects, Petro Cano, 22, and Blanca Alvaradosoto, 20, both of Brentwood, Contra Costa County. With M-16s drawn they stopped their pickup truck on Highway 1.

But despite the removal of $1.5 million of pot from the park via a helicopter and later a U-Haul truck, despite the discovery of $50,000 in damage to the National Seashore, and despite the two arrests with the suspects being booked on charges of cultivating and possessing pot with the intention of distributing more than 1,000 plants, the Park Service surveillance teams missed a key link in the chain of events.

Before suspects Cano and Alvaradosoto were arrested at Thirteen Turns, they allegedly managed to pass some just-harvested marijuana stuffed into sleeping bags to someone waiting in a white pickup truck that got away.

Apparently, the plantation owner became nervous, knowing that a hiker had seen his plants. After Cano was arrested, he told authorities his "employer" had offered him $5,000 to go to the pot patch that very night and salvage a number of buds. Cano was to put the pot in sleeping bags and drop them off at the side of the highway, Tuey of the DEA noted in the District Court filing.

Rangers indeed later found that many plants in the plantation had just been topped.

Rangers spent nearly 30 hours on Friday and Saturday at the plantation making sure no one took anything from the pile of pot plants they had cut down. On Saturday morning, a helicopter ferried the massive load out to Highway 1 where it was carted away in a U-Haul truck.

Unlike the small-scale pot patches, which are common on the North Coast, "this is a factory," ranger Mayo said. "It’s not a garden. It’s a commercial business that three to five people lived in since winter."

Referring to a plot with plants eight to 12 feet high, Mayo added, "I call it the money garden." The plantation included five gardens planted in clearings cut out of the surrounding forest.

The culprits cut down more than 100 trees to create the clearings, with some of the trees believed to be 50 to 80 years old. The plantation’s irrigation system consisted of irrigation ditches fed by a spring that had been dammed three fours of a mile uphill. Along with piping water from the spring, the growers had added perlite to the soil. Camouflaged containers littered the area. Most were filled with water or unknown chemicals and pesticides.

"They used gravity flow to fill the holding ponds. The entire watershed of this area received no water this year," said ranger Mayo, who arrested one of the suspects. "The amount of irrigation line out here is phenomenal."

The encampment was also full of rubbish, unfinished laundry and, a "mine field" of excrement, he noted.

"The area suffered massive resource damage," said park officials. "The damage assessment is still in progress, and we are assuming it will be in excess of $50,000," said John Dell’Osso, Chief of Interpretation for the National Seashore. Although the DEA will cover the cost of the surveillance and removal operation. the Park Service will have to pay for restoring the area.

Despite the involvement of the DEA, marijuana use per se is not the Park Service’s primary objection to pot being grown in parks (usually to ensure that a grower’s own property won’t be confiscated if his plants are discovered).

"Our main goal is protecting the [park’s] resources and keeping the public safe," said acting chief ranger Steve Stinnett.

The pot plantation is the second large raid in two weeks in the Point Reyes area. On Sept. 13, a deer hunter in a remote area of Bucky Stevens’ property off Tomasini Canyon Road, found what he thought were 15 to 20 pot plants growing. Officers, however, found 1,200 but could not identify the grower. Stevens is not a suspect.

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