CITY WANTS TO QUADRUPLE FIGHT AGAINST POT GROWERS

Vancouver police and city staff face a huge backlog of complaints about
marijuana-growing operations

Faced with an estimated 4,000 marijuana-growing operations in Vancouver,
city staff are asking council for extra help in combatting a problem they
say is creating hazardous houses across the city.

The city has been running a "Grow Busters" pilot project since February
with police and B.C. Hydro, and has shut down 114 operations between March
6 and June 23 with a team of nine police officers and five city officials.
The city staff - electrical and fire inspectors - accompany police to
suspected grow sites.

But the team is swamped, says the city's manager of community services,
Jacquie Forbes-Roberts. As well, staff want to establish the project as a
permanent operation for at least a year. The team is planning to quadruple
the number of weekly inspections they do to try to deal with a backlog of
complaints.

"This has been a very successful procedure to deal with a very difficult
problem," said Forbes-Roberts, who stressed that complaints by neighbours
of growing operations have driven the program, particularly in the
Renfrew/Collingwood area.

But a report from her department to city council asking for five more staff
members, coming up for approval next week, observes that "grow operators
show no preference for a particular neighbourhood. Any house on any block
may be potentially a grow operation."

For the city, one of the most successful parts of the program is that it
pays for itself. The costs of staff - estimated at $250,000 - are recovered
by the $309 fee that is charged to landlords in order to obtain approval to
re-occupy the building, and another $200 to reconnect their electrical and
gas services. (As well, a city inspection team goes through the house
before it is re-opened, noting any other irregularities that have to be
fixed before the house can be re-occupied.)

Forbes-Roberts said the fees are as much a part of the program as shutting
down the operations.

"They are an incentive for landlords to be more vigilant."

The report details some of the problems that have been created by the rapid
growth in the number of marijuana-growing operations. The fire department
was, for a while, averaging two fire calls a month related to growing
operations. Growers divert exhaust gas vents for the furnace and hot-water
tank to enhance the growing process, which creates the possibility of a
carbon monoxide build up. And growers sometimes use propane for fuel. "One
20-pound bottle of propane in a confined space is equal to 100 sticks of
dynamite," the report says.

The problems, besides the obvious, is that nearby residents - and sometimes
those in the same building - may be in danger but not realize it.

The report notes that one family living upstairs in a house didn't know the
renter downstairs had started a growing operation. When a fire started, the
renter took off without telling the family upstairs.

Forbes-Roberts said it's important to try to catch growing operations
quickly, because the longer they're in place, the more damage gets done.

"Sometimes we go in and whole floors are chainsawed out."

Vancouver police spokeswoman Constable Anne Drennan said police have been
unable to keep up with the increasing number of marijuana-growing
operations. She said police at any given moment have dozens of solid tips
in hand that they do not have the resources to act on.

City staff play an integral role on the force's crackdown on growing
operations, Drennan said, and she said police are hopeful the city will
find the funds for more support workers.

"If there were additional (city) inspectors available, it would certainly
assist our teams greatly," she said.