TASK FORCE DESTROYS MORE THAN 8,300 MARIJUANA PLANTS FOUND IN SAN LUIS
OBISPO COUNTY

LOS OSOS, Calif. (AP) -- More than 8,300 marijuana plants were found in a
3-day period at eight separate "gardens" in a mountainous area of San Luis
Obispo County, the head of a multi-agency task force said Thursday.

Statewide the task force has helped local authorities collect for
destruction about 85,000 marijuana plants found in 20 counties this summer.
The plants would have a street value of about $340 million, said Sonya
Barna of the California Department of Justice, operations manager of the
Campaign Against Marijuana Plants. The task force involving federal, state
and local law enforcement agencies has three helicopters and 120 people
working throughout California this summer on marijuana eradication, she said.

Helicopters were used to drop workers into remote canyons near Los Osos
Thursday where eight gardens of marijuana plants 7-to-10 feet high were
found, Barna said. The workers cut the plants and the helicopters lifted
them out in nets --to be destroyed or buried at another location.

About 5,000 of the plants were found Tuesday morning by San Luis Obispo
County sheriff's officers acting on a tip. Additional "gardens" were found
Thursday in the same area on several properties. There were no additional
arrests reported after two men were taken into custody at the scene of the
raid.

Each marijuana garden in areas surrounded by dense chapparal brush had
sophisticated watering systems, Barna said. Elsewhere in California, she
said, many marijuana plots "in rural areas look like cornfields, in neat rows."

San Luis Obispo County investigators said Tuesday they believed the Los
Osos marijuana growing operation might be related to a similar raid made
last year at Los Padres National Forest, in which another 5,000 plants were
seized.