CLEANUPS COSTLY, TIME CONSUMING

The Madness Of Meth - Part 5 of 5

Finding a methamphetamine lab often requires months of detailed police
work, but cleaning it up requires fast action and a lot of physical labor.

The officers take samples of all unknown liquids and find their pH levels
so they know what they're working with. Then they record what and how much
of each meth-related substance they've found.

"Essentially all the chemicals are caustic or flammable," said Ben
Rittmiller, commander of the Minnesota River Valley Drug Task Force.

Moving or even touching a jar containing the flammable meth mix can be
dangerous, but officers are trained to know what to look for and what areas
to avoid.

Identifying a meth lab is pretty easy - glass jars, bottles, tubes - but
Waseca County Sheriff Tim Dann said authorities usually don't find a lot of
meth in its final stage.

"With meth, if you have it, you use it," he said.

"Meth users use it fairly quickly because they want to keep that high."

Scouring all surfaces

After the evidence has been collected, law enforcement agencies call in
cleanup crews from businesses such as Bay West Inc., a St. Paul-based
company that specializes in environmental, industrial and emergency
cleaning services for industry and government.

Depending on the length and degree of contamination of a house, crews
sometimes go in wearing protective masks, suits, gloves and boot covers,
said Dan Hannan, emergency response manager at Bay West.

Crews wear all the protective gear when their health could be at risk.
Effects for people with acute exposure to meth chemicals include shortness
of breath, cough, chest pain, dizziness and chemical irritation. Less
severe exposures can result in headache, nausea, dizziness and fatigue.

After crew members are safely inside, they do a "top-to-bottom cleaning of
the home," Hannan said, "basically just scrubbing the heck out of the walls
and floors" with an industrial-grade detergent.

The crew cleans the home from the inside out. They make note of spills and
stains and wipe all surfaces looking for traces of meth.

"It permeates all the carpeting and all the Sheetrock on the walls and goes
through the heating system," Le Sueur County investigator Keith Frederick said.

Then crews clean or remove furniture and curtains if necessary, Hannan
said. Many times walls are repainted to seal in remaining meth residue
throughout the house, no matter where the meth was being made.

"Even if they've been cooking in the basement, there can be pretty high
levels upstairs and vice versa," he said.

Sinks and pipes that chemicals were dumped in sometimes need to be
replaced, too. Bay West crews swab the areas after they're done cleaning to
make sure the meth is gone.

Outside the home, land that meth-making solutions have been dumped on is
excavated, taken off the property and disposed of, Hannan said. The Drug
Enforcement Administration takes the chemicals away and incinerates them,
he said.

Passing the buck

This process isn't cheap. Bay West usually charges $2,000 to $3,000 to
clean a meth-infested apartment and up to $10,000 to clean a large house.

Hannan said property owners pay for the cleanup in most cases. If property
owners can't pay, counties foot the bill, Deborah Durkin of the Department
of Health said.

Dann said he hasn't received any bills for the SWAT team's services, but he
has to pay his officers overtime for their extra hours spent planning the
search and collecting evidence. Once they act on a warrant, the search and
evidence-collecting usually takes 10 to 12 hours, he said.

Hannan said many cities and counties are trying to enact ordinances to
protect themselves against property owners who can't pay for the meth lab
cleanups. They're proposing that if cities or counties have to take action
on behalf of the property owners, they should be reimbursed.

Sibley County already has adopted such an ordinance, and several other area
counties have ordinances in progress.

"Rural counties cannot afford the cleanup at the rate things are going
now," Le Sueur County Sheriff Dave Gliszinski said.