MARIJUANA GARDENS TURN FORESTS INTO DUMPS

The scene is a summer staple in California. Law-enforcement officers
forge through heavy terrain to cut down hundreds, if not thousands, of
marijuana plants, which are hauled away by helicopter.

There's an underbelly to the story, and it isn't the debates about the
effectiveness of the war on drugs or whether pot should be legalized.

The toxic truth is that more and more of our treasured public lands
are becoming garbage pits strewn with chemicals, batteries, fuel
canisters and irrigation pipe.

The perpetrators are marijuana growers who fell trees, divert water
from creeks, kill animals and poison pristine forests.

In a perfect world, cleanup of these mountain pot farms would begin
when the plants are eradicated. But that isn't happening in the
cash-strapped Sierra National Forest east of Fresno. Instead, the job
is left to volunteers.

In 2005, officials identified 29 sites needing cleanup in the area
between Oakhurst and Balch Camp. Today, the number is about 200, says
Shane Krogen, founder of the High Sierra Volunteer Trail Crew.

The Fresno-based group has scoured about 20 spots in the past two
years, Krogen says, but it doesn't have the resources to keep pace
with the damage inflicted by growers.

He estimates 600 more camps haven't been detected. Federal officials
say that for every acre planted in pot, 10 acres are damaged, and
restoration is more than $10,000 an acre.

"The stuff that we are finding is revealing the real extent of the
environmental damage," Krogen says. The Forest Service "should at
least pull out the fuel, fertilizers and chemicals so that winter
weather doesn't leach them into the ecosystem."

There's potential human damage as well. Krogen says it's only a matter
of time before an exploding fuel canister injures a
firefighter.

As growers have become more sophisticated, so have volunteer cleanup
efforts.

Krogen maintains a database of identified sites and uses Google Earth,
a satellite-image mapping system, to scout routes through rugged
areas. Sometimes volunteers are flown to a high ridge by a California
Highway Patrol helicopter and hike down.

Upon reaching a spot, volunteers often must crawl on their bellies and
rub against poison oak to rip out 1-inch plastic pipe. Krogen pulled
out 8,800 feet of pipe on a recent trek to Blue Canyon southwest of
Dinkey Creek.

Krogen, on another trip this winter, found evidence of growers'
resolve to harvest their crop at Patterson Bluffs.

"Bears were harassing them so much they cut down trees and built a log
cabin with a swinging door," Krogen says.

Other volunteers have seen large tree houses at pot farms in the upper
regions of the Kings River.

Volunteers will do another cleanup April 13, and this time they'll be
accompanied by Forest Service officials. Krogen hopes the
show-and-tell session convinces bureaucrats to push for restoration
funding -- and hopes Congress listens.

Says Krogen of the drug mess defiling the Sierra: "It's a ticking
time bomb out there."