DRUG LABS IN VALLEY HIDEOUTS FEED NATION'S HABIT

MADERA, Calif., May 12 - Along the country roads off Highway 99, it
is plain to see why the Central Valley calls itself the nation's
fruit basket. Rising from some of the richest soil in the world,
disciplined rows of fig and almond trees give way to orange and lemon
groves, cherry orchards and bushy lettuce and cabbage plants, as far
as the eye can see.

But hidden away on this soil, in abandoned barns and falling-down
farmhouses, hundreds, if not thousands, of laboratories are churning
out illegal methamphetamine, the highly addictive stimulant that
Barry R. McCaffrey, the former federal drug czar, has called "the
worst drug that has ever hit America."

As a result, methamphetamine is likely to be one of the biggest
challenges for President Bush's newly nominated drug czar, John P.
Walters, and the man Mr. Bush selected to run the Drug Enforcement
Administration, Representative Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas.

In the last few years, the Central Valley, particularly its
heartland, has become so inundated with methamphetamine laboratories
- - many of them run by Mexican crime families - that the Drug
Enforcement Administration has labeled it a "source nation" for the
drug. The valley's only competition, federal authorities say, is
Southeast Asia, which produces and distributes the drug in pill form,
mainly to Europe. Here the drug is produced as a powder, which users
snort, inject or even slip into their coffee.

"It's been growing tremendously in the last five or six years," said
Joe Keefe, chief of operations at the drug agency. "In 1996, we
looked at methamphetamine trafficking by the Mexican nationals and
had 60 investigations. In the last couple of months, we had over
800." The organizations have also expanded their marketing all over
the country, he said, such that methamphetamine produced in
California can be bought on the street in Portland, Me.

Other states, particularly Washington, Missouri and Iowa, also have
significant problems with methamphetamine laboratories, but 97
percent of the "superlabs" that can be traced to Mexican drug
operations are in California, law enforcement officials say. The
state produces 80 percent of the drug found in this country, the
officials say, 60 percent of it in the pastoral towns of the Central
Valley stretching from Bakersfield to Sacramento.

Government officials consider methamphetamine the fastest-growing
illegal drug in this country, in Canada and in parts of Europe,
feeding an epidemic of addiction that they say rivals that of heroin
and cocaine over the past few decades.

But the impact is felt acutely here as the clandestine laboratories
poison the Central Valley's soil with byproducts and tax the combined
resources of special squads from dozens of law enforcement agencies.
Officials have also expressed particular concerns about children who
live in or near the laboratories and are exposed to dangerous fumes.

In the last decade, officials say, methamphetamine production has
surged in the state as a whole and in the Central Valley in
particular. In 1999, 261 laboratories were seized in 9 of the
valley's 17 counties, triple the 73 seized seven years before.

But the cartels, officials say, see the raids simply as the price of
business. When a laboratory is raided or found accidentally -
sometimes when the cooks blow up the building they are in - the
operation simply finds another barn or house.

This makes the operations particularly hard to break, said William
Ruzzamenti, a special agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration
and director of the Central Valley High Intensity Drug-Trafficking
Area program. The Central Valley program, which began in January
2000, operates four task forces from more than 50 federal, state and
local law enforcement agencies that comb the valley for the
laboratories.

They are relentlessly busy. Central Valley's methamphetamine task
forces and other law enforcement agencies crack five laboratories a
day in California. The amount they seize is only about a tenth of the
methamphetamine produced, officials estimate.

The drug cartels out-finance the antidrug efforts many times over.
The Central Valley task forces, for instance, receive $2.5 million a
year in federal aid to fight the producers.

"We keep busting them," Mr. Ruzzamenti said. "But they keep setting up shop."

Methamphetamine, widely known as meth, crank and crystal, was once
produced and sold solely by outlaw motorcycle gangs, drug officials
say. In the 1960's and 70's, the gangs cooked the product in remote
outposts in the California desert and distributed it themselves.
Then, in the early 90's, as crack waned, Mexican crime families,
primarily from Michoacan, who had been trafficking in cocaine from
Colombia, discovered that they could make more money by creating
their own product, which they would not have to smuggle to the United
States.

In places like San Diego, San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles
Counties, they began setting up the superlabs - those that produce at
least 10 pounds a day, unlike the smaller, amateur laboratories run
by drug users.

But aggressive law enforcement efforts began putting a crimp in the
superlabs, and about four years ago, officials say, the cartels began
moving operations north to the San Joaquin Valley, the wide-open
section of the Central Valley.

Law enforcement officials say that shaking the superlab operations is
particularly hard in the Central Valley because its vast, unpopulated
stretches and ready access to interstate roads make it easy to hide
and transport methamphetamine. Also, the valley's chronic
high-unemployment rate makes recruiting workers, ignorant of the
deadly risks of producing the drug, as easy as selling lemonade on a
hot day.

"One of the tragedies of this business is that the crime families
consider the work force a renewable resource," Mr. Ruzzamenti said.
"When the workers get too sick from all the chemicals they've been
ingesting to keep going, they just bring over or recruit others."

Any unassuming building can be a methamphetamine laboratory producing
up to 100 pounds per 24-hour cooking cycle. Robert Pennal, commander
of the Fresno Anti-Meth Task Force - which covers three of the most
active counties, Madera, Fresno and Merced - has learned to look at
every building in the middle of a field with a suspicious eye.

"They love buildings deep in a field, where they can look out and see
who's coming," said Mr. Pennal, on a recent tour of Merced County.
Last year, the task force raided 56 laboratories, 36 in Merced alone.
And the majority, Mr. Pennal said, were superlabs run by Mexican
syndicates.

To demonstrate the ordinariness of a superlab, Mr. Pennal drove to
one his task force raided more than a year ago. The farmer who owns
the land was unaware of the site until it was raided and was still
awaiting word from the county health department on when he could tear
the building down. But when Mr. Pennal pulled up to the property, he
discovered new trash bags full of the ingredients used to produce
methamphetamine, from gloves to denatured alcohol to Coleman cooking
fuel.

The abandoned farmhouse had once again been used to produce the drug,
perhaps even the day before.

Superlab operators will rent a farmhouse and work on the property for
as long as a year without the farmer who owns the property even
realizing it, Mr. Pennal said. The cartels either pay off a farm
worker to act as a lookout or rent the farm worker's house as a
laboratory, paying the worker to keep quiet.

Earlier this month, an almond and fig farmer in Madera County
stumbled onto a laboratory in an abandoned house on his 600-acre
farm. "I noticed the windows were boarded from the inside, so I just
went inside," said the farmer, who refused to give his name for fear
of retaliation from the cartels.

What he found was a laboratory in midcook, capable of producing 40
pounds of methamphetamine a day. The drug is immediately cut once,
often twice, for a yield of perhaps 80 to 120 pounds. On the street,
its value would be $1 million to $2 million, depending on where it
was sold. (Wholesale prices run from $4,500 to $8,000 a pound in
California, $15,000 to $20,000 a pound on the East Coast, Mr. Pennal
said.) The drug costs $1,300 to $1,800 a pound to produce, including
labor and raw ingredients, an unpalatable assortment that can include
crushed diet pills, nasal decongestants, even antifreeze.

Two people were arrested that day - a farm worker who lived next door
in worker barracks who was suspected of having been hired to keep
quiet and watch the laboratory, and a suspected laboratory employee
found on the premises.

But just to remove the materials and catalog them took dozens of
special agents, many of them outfitted with thousands of dollars
worth of protective equipment. The ground around the Madera farm
laboratory was white with the residue of methamphetamine byproducts.

"The farming situation being what it's been the last couple of
years," said the farmer, "we're most worried about the hazardous
materials and what it's going to do to the farm. If it costs a lot to
clean, we just might give up the farm."

Officials say the laboratories create up to 10 pounds of waste for
every pound of the drug. With an estimated output of well over
100,000 pounds a year, that means a million pounds of waste is being
produced, including chemicals like red phosphorous, hydrochloric acid
and hydriodic acid. One of the most dangerous byproducts is
phosphine, which scientists say is so toxic only a few molecules can
be deadly.

When a laboratory is found, the state hires waste cleanup companies
to remove the materials inside (at a cost to taxpayers of
approximately $10 million a year). But the cost of cleaning
contaminated soil and groundwater is the property owner's burden.
More and more, said John Anderson, the sheriff of Madera County,
where about a dozen superlabs were found last year, owners are
abandoning their properties.

"One farmer was hit with a $600,000 cleanup bill and he let the farm
go for back taxes," Mr. Anderson said. "Now the county has to foot
the cleanup costs."

There are other costs as well. Child protection agencies here,
flooded with cases of neglect and abuse, trace the majority of the
cases to parents who use methamphetamine, which causes paranoia and
violent outbursts in some users. In addition, the Central Valley task
forces recently began testing children they find in or near
methamphetamine laboratories, because fumes produced in the cooking
of the drug can destroy lung tissue and induce chemical pneumonia.
Every single child, said Mr. Ruzzamenti, the drug enforcement
director, has tested positive for methamphetamine or a toxic
byproducts.

"Methamphetamine is the most significant drug threat in this
district," said John Vincent, the United States attorney for the
Eastern District, which covers the Central Valley. "About 75 percent
of the drug cases that we bring annually are methamphetamine cases."

The penalties for methamphetamine production are high. Possession of
500 grams, just over a pound, commands a minimum mandatory sentence
of 10 years in prison, and the higher the amount, the higher the
sentence. A production line worker in a superlab - which employ five
to six workers and a foreman - is liable on conviction to be
sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.

But Mr. Vincent noted that most raids resulted in arrests of
low-level workers - the renewable resources - and left the source
untouched. "It is difficult to work your way up the chain for two
reasons," he said. "Lab workers are kept ignorant and they fear
retaliation."