DRUG AGENTS NET $3.7 MILLION IN SAN BENITO POT FARM RAIDS

San Benito County - They sat undetected for months. Their emerald
stalks gradually growing taller, fuller - blossoming into shiny,
profitable buds.

But more than 1,550 marijuana plant's pungent existence came to an
abrupt end with San Benito County sheriff's deputies and drug
enforcement agents' swift sickle swipes on Thursday and Friday.

In a tactical operation, deputies with the sheriff department's
high-risk team and United Narcotics Enforcement Team agents eradicated
seven marijuana plots containing more than 3,000 pounds of marijuana
with an estimated street value of $3.7 million on a ranch located in
south San Benito County.

With more than a month left in the growing season, agents have seized
more than 17,000 plants in the past few months, according to UNET
Commander Mark Colla.

After months of work and thousands of pounds of pot confiscated, the
team is still targeting about six other sites in San Benito County,
Colla said.

The plots, located in two large gardens, were spotted by helicopter
Wednesday, said pilot Fred Young. There are several different areas in
the county that are continuously used for marijuana growing, he said.

Officers discovered the gardens when they spotted a water line weaving
through a dry creek bed that shouldn't have been there, Young said.

Officers followed the hose through a canyon and found a trail that led
them to the gardens, he said.

"Sometimes they make a mistake and use a white fertilizer bag they
forget to cover up, or something that shines," he said. "Once in a
while we're lucky and we get people running through the brush."

After locating the plots, six UNET agents and six sheriff's officers
camped out at the secluded ranch. They rose hours before daybreak on
Thursday and entered the garden on foot, guided by Young's eagle eye
from above.

Clad in head-to-toe camouflage and toting guns, machetes, sickles and
other tools, the officers scaled boulders and climbed near vertical
inclines to reach the remote plots.

Before entering each plot, agents secured the gardens to make sure
there were no traps or pistol-packing planters lingering nearby.

Trekking over miles of hilly landscape, they chopped down every plant,
carrying bundles worth thousands of dollars under their arms to be
inventoried, stacked and destroyed.

On the first day, more than 500 plants were seized and buried. The
officer's second day netted 1,000 more plants, Colla said.

While officers found camp sites among the gardens, no arrests were
made, Colla said.

Most of the people tending the gardens are illegal aliens, working for
Mexican drug cartels, Colla said.

Depending on the size of the garden and whether it's successfully
cultivated, they are paid between $3,000 and $5,000 for a crop worth
millions on the street, he said.

Tenders can be nearly impossible to track and capture in the dense
brush if agents don't get a jump on them right away, Young said.

Because they live in the gardens for months at a time, they know the
area intimately and have hiding places and escape routes, he said.

"These guys can go up the hill like goats," Young said. "They're
unbelievable."

While arrests are a bonus, possibly allowing agents to track them back
to a cartel, they're not always guaranteed, Colla said. But destroying
millions of dollars worth of marijuana is worth the effort, he said.

In 1999, when a whopping 900,000 plants were eradicated throughout the
county, more than 25,000 plants were found at the ranch alone, said
ranch manager Gilles Ruel.

Last year plants weren't found, and Ruel believes growers took some
time off from cultivating the area because it was becoming a hot spot.

Sheriff's Detective Sgt. Wes Walker said there's no way to know how
many other gardens remain undiscovered.

"It's so dense and tough to find," he said. "They go to great lengths
to try to hide the gardens."

Colla agreed, but said there is a good chance most are eradicated
because there's only so much water available to grow the plants.

"It's a great feeling. Nobody got injured (on this raid) and we're
able to get dope off the streets," he said. "It makes a great impact
on future generations.