MARIJUANA SWEEP NETS BIG PAYOFF

Federal, state and local law enforcement agencies say they have
seized more than 340,000 marijuana plants with an estimated street
value of $1.4 billion and arrested 36 suspects in a sweeping
crackdown on marijuana cultivation on public land in eastern Tulare
County over the last week.

The joint operation involving 14 federal, state and local law
enforcement agencies, which started July 27 and will continue through
Aug. 9, brought President Bush's drug czar, John Walters, to a press
conference at the National Guard Armory in Visalia yesterday, where
officials announced the program.

Called Operation LOCCUST, for Locating Organized Cannabis Cultivators
Using Saturation Tactics, the foot- and air-based raids focused on 83
locations where marijuana was being grown on federal and state land
in eastern Tulare County.

Some of the land was in the Sequoia National Forest and in Kings
Canyon and Sequoia national parks.

"I want to congratulate those here who've made these arrests
possible," Walters, director of the White House's Office of National
Drug Control Policy, said to an audience of about 70 law enforcement,
state and local officials.

Walters spent Tuesday morning in a Blackhawk helicopter touring
several marijuana

growing locations. The tour stopped by Osa Creek in the Sequoia
National Forest, where officials said they destroyed up to 12,000
plants Monday evening.

Among those accompanying Walters was Tulare County Supervisor Allen
Ishida, who has pushed for federal and state aid for drug policing on
public lands.

Up to 80 percent of the marijuana grown in the United States is grown
on public lands, much of it controlled by Mexican cartels, Walters
said. The raids, he said, were meant as a message to those drug traffickers:

"Get out," he said. "You're not going to turn our communities and our
national treasures into poison."

Multi-Agency Operation

The joint operation involves a range of federal, state and local
agencies, including the U.S. Attorney's Office, National Park
Service, U.S. Forest Service, the California Highway Patrol and the
Tulare County Sheriff's Department.

The agencies began planning last November and started surveillance
flights by the California Air National Guard in January, Tulare
County Sheriff Bill Wittman said.

The operation is a pilot program that began last year in Shasta
County, one of the dozen of inland California counties where
large-scale marijuana cultivation on public lands is a growing
problem, said U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott.

Officials said they were especially concerned about how the presence
of marijuana growing areas affects public and law enforcement safety,
as well as their environmental effect because poaching, clear-cutting
and toxic chemicals are often involved.

Last year, Tulare County spent $350,000 and was forced to assign much
of its gang task force to public lands drug policing during the
summer, county officials said.

The joint operation, however, helped the county quickly equal its
2007 record-setting marijuana busts and dismantle some of the
infrastructure -- irrigation hoses, stream diversions, and tents and
cabins -- that growers erect, officials said.

"We've never had the resources available to do that," Wittman said,
adding that the total cost of the program will be shared among the
participating agencies and has yet to be determined.