POT UP IN SMOKE

Grow-Op Bust-Up

UP TO 7,000 marijuana plants worth $7 million were found in a Welland-area
greenhouse complex that also grew English cucumbers, Niagara Regional
Police said last night. Early radio reports that 35,000 plants worth $35
million were found at the MKJ Green House Ltd. complex were inflated
because firefighters mistook cucumbers for pot plants.

While the bust is not as large as initially believed, it is still sizable
and has raised the ire of emergency officials.

"I am concerned about our people for a number of reasons," said Port
Colborne and Wainfleet fire chief Tom Cartwright, whose volunteer
firefighters were called to the farm around 2:15 a.m. after a passing truck
driver saw a fire.

"You saw what happened in Alberta. Who knows what our people could have
walked into. You never know what to expect," he said.

Cartwright said firefighters knocked down a large fire in the main
greenhouse area and several smaller fires elsewhere.

Firefighters found an empty fire extinguisher and a running garden hose
inside the greenhouses and noticed one set of tires leaving the scene.

"It suggests they tried to put the fire out and weren't able to and then
got out," Cartwright said.

The MKJ property, on the north side of Hwy. 3 just west of the hamlet of
Winger, has 14 greenhouses facing Hwy. 3 and four more at the rear.

Cartwright said two generators fed by two diesel fuel tanks provided
energy. He said the fire started when an exhaust system overheated and
caused a combustible wall to catch fire. A large short circuit was followed
by other shorts in the electrical system.

Cartwright said a diesel tank was in danger of blowing up, but firefighters
cooled it down.

Niagara police Sgt. Tom Lee said the operation will be dismantled tomorrow.

The greenhouse grow op was inconspicuous to neighbours and passersby. A
commercial sign suggests that MKJ Green Houses grows only English cucumbers
and a green plastic mail box posts a Ontario Federation of Agriculture
membership sign.

An East Indian couple and their three children -- two girls and a boy --
moved on to the property two years ago. They left in either December or
January. Later an Asian man was sighted from time to time in the greenhouse
area.

Cartwright said his 30 volunteer firefighters -- who share a total
honorarium budget of $75,000 -- believed they were responding to a
neighbour's crisis.

Local residents didn't know the farm was being used as a grow house until
early yesterday, when powerful grow lights and mature marijuana plants
could be seen through a gap burned in plastic-covered glass.

Neighbour Rick Heitman said he didn't notice anything unusual at the
cucumber farm recently except that the increased number of cube vans and
transport trucks he believed were picking up cucumbers were always unmarked.