METH MAKERS LEAVE COSTLY MESS

Langley taxpayers are paying a high price as the Township becomes
known as the Lower Mainland's meth waste dump.

Without even taking detox, lab dismantling and preventive education
costs into account, Langley taxpayers are forking out more than
$120,000 a year just to dispose of meth lab waste.

While Lower Mainland residents are increasingly aware of how prolific
crystal methamphetamine use has become in today's society, and how
highly addictive and horrifyingly toxic the drug is, its producers
continued to make and sell the hallucinogenic drug in mass quantities.

But it seems the disposal of large quantities of waste created during
production of this drug is what is putting Langley on the map for many
meth producers.

"It can't just be disposed of in the usual manner of trash," said
Langley RCMP drug squad Sgt. Jerry Prevett.

And consequently, producers are being attracted to Langley because of
its bounty of parks, rural roadsides and farmers' fields - prime
locations to dump pails or barrels full of the toxins without being
detected, Prevett said. He explained that for every pound of meth
produced, the makers produce five to 10 pounds of this waste.

Meth producers often bulk up or cut the drug by adding the
anti-freeze, Draino, camp fuel or other highly toxic substances that
can be found under most kitchen sinks. Since meth is made up of such
corrosive, flammable and often explosive chemicals, its by-product (a
thick brown liquid sludge) is classified as dangerous goods.

Being a Lower Mainland dump site for this kind of waste has added a
whole new cost factor to the municipal budget and a level of health
and safety concern that has local politicians worried.

Does that mean Langley is home to a multitude of meth labs? Unknown,
Prevett said.

"We have intelligence that there's labs in the Langley area," he told
the Langley Advance. "In fact, I'd be surprised if we don't have labs
here."

He recalled a large meth bust in December 2005 in the 19900-block of
56th Avenue where firefighters responded to an apparent shed fire only
to find it was chemical vapours escaping from the meth lab inside. But
he noted that most labs can be operated in a confines of a house or
outbuilding and go undetected by onlookers or passersby, making them
difficult to find.

In the meantime, however, he agreed that the rural areas in Langley
are ripe for dumping, and he believes meth producers are coming in
from other communities to dispose of their sludge here.

While fire chief Bruce Dundas said the City of Langley was unaware of
any such dump sites within City limits during the past year, assistant
fire chief Len Foss from the Langley Township said his crews are faced
with disposing of at least one a month at the average cost of
$10,000-$12,000 each.

The most recent dump site was discovered on Jan. 17 alongside the
street near Williams Park. The dump consisted of 14 separate 20-litre
pails of brown liquid that turned out to be highly toxic meth waste,
Foss said.

While local firefighters and police were both called out to this and
any dump sites found in the Township boundaries, local emergency
responders are not authorized to actually deal with the dangerous
substances, Foss explained. Instead, hazardous material (HazMat)
experts from a Coquitlam company called CEDA Emergency Response are
called in to collect and dispose of the material.

While most of those who dump the waste are careful not to spill, for
their own selfish safety reasons, there are cases when seals get
broken, said Patrick Knight, CEDA division manager for the Pacific
region.

"For the most part, we find them sealed," Knight said.

But there have been unfortunate cases of spillage. He pointed to one
last fall in Langley where the dumpers' vehicle apparently became
stuck, and in attempts to get it free, several of the containers of
sludge broke open. There was so much spilled, Knight said, that a
vapour cloud could be seen looming above the site where the toxic
chemicals had mixed together.

Knight concurred that "Langley seems to be the most prominent site for
dumps," noting that his team typically collect anywhere from 10 to 50
pails of sludge at any one of the dump sites they attend in Langley.

The biggest cost, Knight said, is not usually in recovering of the
abandoned materials, but in the next phase - namely the legal disposal
at any of a number of licensed facilities in the Lower Mainland.

Outside of the added annual costs to Langley Township and in turn the
taxpayers - a figure that came as a surprise to Mayor Kurt Alberts -
he said he's more concerned about the added danger it poses for local
residents, animals and the environment.

In past, the municipality has been the one responsible agency forced
to pay for clean up of other disposal sites that have included
household waste, marijuana grow-operation debris and stolen and
torched cars dumped in some of those same remote locations. And he
hates to see any such dumping taking place.

But with 800 kilometres of roads, and 80 per cent of the 122 square
miles of Township still rural, he's not surprised to hear meth waste
is dumped here. He's heard about the problem in past from staff
reports, but had no idea of the magnitude.

The issue, he said, speaks to a much bigger drug problem facing
society today.

"Drugs have a huge cost to society and this is just another example,"
Alberts said.

There's no easy fix to the drug problem, and he doesn't believe
there's an easy solution to the meth waste dumping. What Alberts did
do was ask rural residents to be vigilant and to make note of any
suspicious situations, to take down licence plate numbers, vehicle
descriptions and any other details without putting themselves in
harm's way, and reporting that to police or the Township bylaw
department.