ILLEGAL POT GROWS DAMAGING FOREST LAND

The U.S. Forest Service reported on Tuesday that 166 illegal marijuana
grow sites have been found over the years in the Mendocino National
Forest - more than any other national forest in the state.

The Forest Service has money to clean up about 10 percent of those
sites, according to USFS Forest Supervisor Tom Contreras, who spoke to
the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors Tuesday during a routine
update on the forest.

"This last year we eradicated more marijuana in the Mendocino National
Forest than any other public lands in the United States," Contreras
said.

He said the problem continues to escalate despite partnerships with
local and state agencies for eradication.

Third District Supervisor John Pinches pushed Contreras to present a
plan at the board's upcoming meeting in Covelo, scheduled for Aug. 3,
of how to stop the illegal drug cartel activity.

Pinches said it appeared no one wanted to talk about the cartels and
their effect on the forest, and noted the issue of illegal marijuana
growing wasn't on the list of priorities Contreras presented to the
board, which included climate change, ecological restoration, water
quality, garnering federal stimulus money and developing off-highway
vehicle trails.

"We've lost our national forest," Pinches said, repeating the
statement 10 times in the next five minutes. "Forget all these other
issues; let's take back our forest. It's out of hand. There's got to
be a plan to take back the forest."

"I'm just as embarrassed and ashamed as far as this activity taking
place in the proportions that it is in the Mendocino National Forest,"
Contreras said. "I feel just as frustrated as far as not being able to
manage what I have been given responsibility to provide the American
people."

Fourth District Supervisor Kendall Smith said the USFS had been
"grossly underfunded" for the past five or six years.

The Forest Service has $275,000 in federal funding to clean up as many
as 16 of the sites where illegal drug cartel activity was found -
sites where water is diverted through plastic piping and often mixed
with fertilizers, booby traps are set up and armed illegal residents
camp with the gardens in rugged, often hard-to-reach sites in the forest.

Contreras said what commonly needs to be cleaned up includes garbage,
human waste, pesticides, herbicides and flammable chemicals that are
left behind at the grow sites. Statewide, it costs an average of
$10,000 to $20,000 to clean up each site, he said.

That doesn't include the cost of using a contractor to clean up
hazardous chemicals, Contreras said, which could exhaust the $275,000
before the Forest Service can get to the 16 sites he estimated his
workers could restore with that money.

Clean-up work could begin in the next month, depending on area law
enforcement and whether the forest workers can do it safely, according
to USFS Public Affairs Officer Tamara Schmidt.

Tearing down the infrastructure the cartels leave behind - including
piping, tarps for mixing water with fertilizer and rough shelters - is
key to keeping them from coming back year after year, according to
Schmidt.

An initial federal allocation of $25,000 went to areas identified as
needing the money to clean up the illegal grow sites, according to
Contreras, then Sen. Diane Feinstein procured an additional $250,000
for the Mendocino National Forest - one of the largest amounts statewide.