ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE FEARED AT MARIJUANA GROWING SITE

Land sprayed with Malathion, a pond carved into a hillside and
manzanita trees stripped and cut are evidence of the environmental
damage brought by illegal marijuana fields raided last week in West
Marin.

On Tuesday, National Park Service rangers and law enforcement showed
off one several makeshift, ramshackle camps that produced at 22,740
pot plants with a value of at least $50 million.

No arrests have been made in the case.

After a three-quarters of a mile hike down a trail carved by the
growers from the Bolinas Ridge Trail, officials gave a tour of the
growers' living quarters and plots of land where marijuana plants were
cultivated with the aid of fertilizers, ponds and chemicals.

Every element of the operation was damaging to the environment, even
the trail to the site, officials said.

"This is not a properly built trail," said Scott Anderson of the Marin
County Sheriff's Office. "When it rains, this will turn into a river
and cause erosion."

At the growing site, evidence shows the growers mercilessly used
nature to aid their illegal enterprise.

"They dug this out and lined it with plastic," said Rene Buehl, park
ranger with Point Reyes National Seashore, showing a 15-foot long,
6-foot wide and 6-foot deep water pond dug out of a hillside.

The work was done by hand, but the pond was cut so deep it looked as
though it could have been done by a backhoe.

"They ran a hose to a creek and the water would flow into here for
irrigation," Buehl said. "They used the natural resources."

The land below the pond had been terraced to grow the plants, and
holes - which had held three to four plants to each until yanked out
by officers - pocked the landscape.

A nearby camp where growers lived was strewn with plastic packages of
Top Ramen instant soups, soda cans and clothes. A stove was in a
hut-like structure, which has a roof made of plastic tarp.

"The garbage and litter is just amazing," said John Dell'Osso, chief
of interpretation and education for the Point Reyes National Seashore.
"Everything was just tossed. Cans, paper products, jars, they were
just left."

The damage to protected animal species - such as spotted owls, coho
salmon and steelhead trout - is not known, Dell'Osso said, but noted
it would cost tens of thousands of dollar to restore the earth.

"The trees will grow back. But there are longer term issues like the
fertilizers and pesticides that were used. Will they get into the
water? How does that affect Bolinas Lagoon? It's a slight possibility
that water was or will be affected," he said.

"They cut whole trees, mature trees. There was water being diverted
from streams into ponds. There were animal traps, rabbit traps, rat
traps and rat poison. They wanted them away from the plants. We also
found pellet guns, so they were shooting birds or small mammals,"
Dell'Osso added.

He said the pot farms represent a great frustration of park
officials.

"We want to preserve resources and provide a safe recreational area
for the public, and here we have resources being impacted and visitors
may not feel as safe," he said.

And officials believe there could be more pot sites in the
area.

"Yes, there is more up here, both on park service land and water
district land," Dell'Osso said, noting there are 91,000 acres of park
land to patrol, many in remote areas. "There are more big sites. It
boils down to patrol resources. What do we have available to us. It's
such a huge, huge area to consider."

Anderson of the county sheriff's office agreed.

"It is conceivable we did not recover everything," he
said.