DRUG GANGS IN $70M POWER HEIST

ALMOST $70 million of electricity is stolen each year by gangs growing
hydroponic marijuana in abandoned warehouses and even buried shipping
containers.The ease with which growers can set up operations has flooded
Sydney and regional centres with increasingly potent cannabis.

The industry is so well organised that electricity diversion to supply
illegal hydroponic operations is now the biggest area of power theft.

The Electricity Supply Association of Australia (ESAA) and the Australasian
Utilities Revenue Protection Association estimate hydroponic theft is
running at $68 million a year.

The theft is not to save money, but to avoid suspicion from outrageously
high electricity bills.

"It's an enormous problem, and one that's been increasing," ESAA managing
director Keith Orchison said.

"Total electricity theft in Australia is worth $120 million a year, so you
can see the size of the problem."

Fuelling the growth in illegal cultivation is the boom in hydroponics
retailing.

Eleven years ago, there were just four such retailers in Australia,
compared with 420 today. Some retailers openly court home growers by
placing ads in dance magazines and the alternative media.

South Australian police claimed this month that 75 per cent of the
hydroponics industry in Adelaide was involved in illegal cultivation.

Detective Superintendent Ken McKay, from the NSW Crime Agencies, said
police recently raided a hydroponic operation in a disused mine shaft at
Lightning Ridge.

"They'll grow it almost anywhere," he said. "Hydroponics is the preferred
method of cultivation."

Unlike outdoor producers, hydroponic growers can produce four crops a year.
Supt McKay said some neighbourhoods acted as vast co-operatives, with each
house growing two or three plants.

"They're then sold to a central distributor, and this is where organised
crime becomes involved."

Police frequently gain information from neighbours or utilities suspicious
of soaring power bills.

The biggest bust in Sydney recently involved 3000 plants with a street
value of $10 million.