POWER PIGS POINTED OUT

This and other rural communities could become havens for grow ops
thanks to new legal powers being proposed by the B.C. Liberal government.

Amendments to the Safety Standards Act will require electricity
companies to give municipalities information about residences with
unusual power consumption, Forest Minister Rich Coleman announced April 6.

The amendments are designed to help local authorities target and shut
down marijuana grow operations more quickly and efficiently, and to
give local governments the authority to deal with local safety issues.

"The number of grow ops in our province is increasing and so are the
problems associated with these operations," said Coleman. "Grow ops
are more likely to catch fire, more likely to have guns inside and are
more likely to be robbed. They pose a danger to our neighbourhoods,
and we're determined to shut them down."

The intent is to get local governments to take the lead, at their
discretion, by requesting information from BC Hydro, explained
Christine Lewis, from the Public Affairs Bureau.

The local government would then contact the BC Safety Authority, or
its internal electrical safety branch, to see whether electrical
permits have been taken out which would explain high power
consumption.

The list of names and addresses would then be run past the police to
check for any ongoing investigations or connections with criminal activity.

Then, municipalities have the option of assembling a team and visiting
suspected homes.

"A pilot project conducted in Surrey last year demonstrated how
successful this approach can be," Marvin Hunt, the president of the
Union of British Columbia Municipal-ities, said. "In just three
months, we dismantled 119 grow operations.

This legislation will clearly go a long way for B.C.
communities,"

The new legislation will help reduce the risks to emergency responders
at grow-op fires, by hopefully reducing the number of grow ops that
may have to be responded to by emergency service providers, said
Darrell Blades, the director of 100 Mile Community Services and fire
chief.

However, there may be unintended side effects.

"I do have a concern that large municipalities, like Surrey, who have
the resources to run an aggressive program targeting grow operations,
will end up pushing those operations into smaller municipalities and
rural areas where the resources are not available to run programs
similar to the pilot project in Surrey," he said.

The ammendments will have to go through a second and third reading and
then must be passed in the Legislature. It should come into effect
this spring.

"The intent of the legislation has merit to it, but it needs to be
examined to see what the cascading effects would be," Charlie Wyse,
MLA for Cariboo South said. "It may move people from more densely
populated urban areas and move them to the more rural parts of the
province where policing resources are already stretched thin."

Information from electrical companies would be provided to regional
districts as well as towns and cities.

However the focus is mainly on residential areas as it is hard to
determine how much power is normal for farm and rural users.