ANTI-METH FORCES MUSTER TODAY IN FRESNO

At Least 80 Are Expected.

Participants in today's Central Valley Methamphetamine Summit will be
dominated by law enforcement, but some plan to present California's
political leaders with a long list of other needs relating to the drug and
its effects.

Members of Fresno County's newly organized Drug Endangered Children task
force will make a case for long-term follow-up medical care for children
who are taken from homes where illegal meth labs are discovered.

A contractor who cleans up meth lab sites will ask for consistent
lab-cleanup standards, public funding to help innocent property owners with
costs, and a system to reward people who report labs and their operators.

Those requests and others will be presented to California's two U.S.
senators, four Central Valley congressmen, the state's lieutenant governor
and attorney general, and three members of the state Assembly at the
summit, scheduled for 2:30 to 5 p.m. at Fresno's Downtown Club, 2120 Kern
St. It is open to the public.

Including elected officials and their staffs, more than 80 people are
scheduled to attend the unprecedented summit, prompted in part by an
18-page investigative report that ran Oct. 8 in the McClatchy Co.'s
California newspapers, including The Bee.

"Our objective is to bring federal, state and local officials together to
identify what are the next steps that we need to take in order to continue
our war against meth production in the Valley," said Rep. Cal Dooley,
D-Hanford, one of the summit's sponsors.

The other sponsors are U.S. Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, both
Democrats; and Rep. Gary Condit, D-Ceres.

Also scheduled to attend are Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa; Rep. Doug
Ose, R-Sacramento; Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante; state Attorney General Bill
Lockyer; and Assembly members Dean Florez, D-Shafter; Dave Cogdill,
R-Modesto; and Sarah Reyes, D-Fresno.

In their description of the summit's format, the organizers said they want
to hear about "specific solutions to the meth problem" and do not plan to
take prepared testimony or focus on the problem's dimensions.

"All participants are well-versed on the scope of the problem," the
description said. "This summit is focused on suggested solutions."

For Paul Willmore, a special agent in the state Bureau of Narcotics
Enforcement and a member of the Drug Endangered Children task force, what's
needed is some way to keep an eye on the health of the hundreds of children
a year who are discovered around meth labs and meth-lab dump sites.

Children were found at 417 meth-related labs and dump sites in 1999, The
Bee's stories said.

Ordinarily, Willmore said, children found at a crime scene are turned over
to a relative and little follow-up care is needed or given.

But, he said, "you can't do that with children at meth-lab sites. You need
to check them out physically," because their bodies may carry lingering
traces of toxic chemicals.

The task force's chairwoman, Fresno County Deputy District Attorney Laurel
Jackson Montoya, said the group has a specific list of needs to present.

"Obviously, we'd like to get money," she said. "We'd like to get money for
a DEC drug-endangered children van, money for dedicated members of a DEC
team, money for testing of children, things like that."

Robert Lassotovitch, a lab cleanup contractor with PARC Environmental in
Fresno, has a proposed list of solutions to the hazardous-waste problems
posed by the chemicals and other substances associated with meth labs.

They include setting consistent standards for meth-lab cleanups.

At present, Lassotovitch said, standards vary from one county to the next,
and some classes of property owners, such as farmers, are often held to a
stricter standard.

Lassotovitch also said public funding is needed for meth-lab cleanups in
cases where property owners have been victimized by illegal labs
established on their land without their permission. Costs of such cleanups
range from $2,500 to $16,000, on average, and they can be much higher, he said.

A bill that would have done some of what Lassotovitch proposes died in the
Legislature last year, buried by objections from state officials and some
legislators, who said state funding of cleanups might effectively reward
property owners for being negligent in overseeing the use of their land.

The plights of innocent landowners and drug-endangered children were
discussed in The Bee's stories in October, as was the Central Valley's
long-standing struggle to get money for a law enforcement crackdown on the
meth industry.

The series also talked of the difficulties that meth users have in getting
treatment for their addiction, if they do not have private insurance, but
Dooley said that the summit's organizers did not think they would have
enough time to deal with that issue.

"This summit is focused more on the actual battle against the production of
meth, as well as some of the related issues, such as children who are
exposed," he said.

A director of one of the region's biggest treatment programs said, in fact,
that he didn't even know about the summit until he read about it Saturday
in The Bee, and that he won't be able to attend because of a scheduling
conflict.

If he were there, however, Ray Banks, regional executive director of the
Turning Point mental-health and substance-abuse treatment centers, said he
would say that one key to solving the meth problem is to make sure that
users who want treatment can get it, even if they can't pay for it.

"There is a shortage, particularly, of residential treatment facilities for
those who don't have private insurance," Banks said. "The counties have
funded some slots, but it's not equal to the need.

"That seems to be what these hard-core meth users need," he said. "They
don't seem to be able to kick the habit in an outpatient program. Some do,
but most don't.a We would lobby for more funding in that area."