Two arrested in SLO meth bust

SAN LUIS OBISPO -- Two men have been arrested on suspicion of
manufacturing at least 50 pounds of methamphetamine a week and are expected
to face charges of environmental pollution. County Narcotics Task Force
officers said they dug up a lot of chemical waste that may have polluted
ponds and groundwater on the rural 1020 O'Connor Way site where the
makeshift laboratory was found after a six-month investigation.

County health officers along with agents for state Water Quality Control
and the Environmental Protection Agency are involved in the investigation.

Howard Eugene Leasure, 41, who had been living in a mobile home on the
property, and Nickolaus Kinstantein Kopp, 51, of Cambria were arrested
Wednesday. The arrests were not announced until Thursday.

San Luis Obispo Police Chief Jim Gardiner, an NTF spokesman, said Kopp has
been charged with manufacturing and carrying a concealed weapon. Leasure
was charged with manufacturing and possession for sale.

The methamphetamine, he said, was being manufactured on O'Connor Way as
well as on Park Hill Road in Santa Margarita and Main Street in Cambria.

Leasure was living on the O'Connor Way property in a doublewide mobile
home. NTF officers said the drug was being made in an adjacent motor home
and in a large garage up the hill near where a fire destroyed a $450,000
home in May 1996.

They also found chemicals and paraphernalia used for manufacturing
methamphetamine at Kopp's home in Cambria. Several guns also were seized.
Both men were being held without bail in County Jail.

Gardiner said the waste products appear to have been dumped over a long
period of time.

"We're very concerned," he said, "about the environmental hazard because of
all the rain we've had and how this may have leached into the water."

Ultimately, Gardiner said the cleanup responsibility belongs to the
property owner. The O'Connor Way land reportedly is owned by the Alex Ramey
family, which does not live there.

Mike Cole, an investigator with the Department of Forestry/County Fire,
said Ramey's home burned to the ground in the early morning hours of May
11, 1996. The cause of the fire was never determined, Cole said, but it was
not drug-related. The house had been rented out and was unoccupied at the
time.

All that remained of the 5,500-square-foot-home Thursday were pillars and
rubble.

On nearby tarps police had placed guns, sacks of red phosphorus, kitty
litter (to mask odors, officers said), crushed 5-gallon drums, and numerous
items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.

Officers speculated that the finished product was to be sent to Los Angeles
for distribution. They said about 150 pounds -- worth $600,000 -- could
have been made at the San Luis Obispo site.