NEW METHOD USED TO TAKE ON LABS

Environmental Agencies Help Fight Methamphetamine

West Virginia isn't seeing the septic tank-sized holes of hazardous waste
that have sprouted up around methamphetamine labs in California and
Arizona, but the environmental and public health hazards warrant
prosecution, state and federal officials said.

For three years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state
Department of Environmental Protection have been working with police on
meth lab investigations.

Their joint effort has led to the conviction of 14 meth lab operators.

So far, 10 of those individuals have been sentenced to a total of 756
months in prison and 408 months on supervised release, which comes out to
an average sentence of about 9 years and 8 months each. The remaining four
are scheduled to be sentenced in April or May.

Although the U.S. Attorney's Office brought the environmental charges on
behalf of the EPA, the agent in charge of the EPA' s West Virginia criminal
investigation division said the charges wouldn't have happened without the
DEP's assistance.

"We have done more meth lab investigations in West Virginia than EPA has
done anywhere else in the nation," resident agent Marty Wright said.

While the EPA has a five-person unit that can assess meth lab sites, the
members of that unit are spread across several states.

"It's not easy for me to assemble this team on a moment's notice," he said.

The DEP's hazardous waste people, however, can be at a site anywhere in the
state within a few hours, he said. More importantly, the DEP investigators
are experienced at gathering evidence and maintaining a "chain of custody"
for that evidence that will withstand court challenges.

"We've used them extensively on working these cases," Wright said.

EPA offices in other states are calling the West Virginia office for tips
on how to handle meth lab cases, he added.

Mike Dorsey, head of the DEP's Office of Waste Management, and Tom Fisher,
a field supervisor, said the DEP is glad to help put meth lab operators out
of business.

"I have teenage kids," Dorsey said. "Tom does, too. A lot of us do."

In addition to the threat the labs pose by generating illegal drugs, they
also pose a direct threat to the communities around them, he said.

"They're burning houses down. Blowing things up. It's a threat," Dorsey said.

Nick Gillispie, an EPA special agent stationed in Charleston, said the
fires and explosions are generally the result of meth lab operators not
knowing or not caring about what they're doing.

"A lot of what we see is that the people who steal this stuff put it in
containers that are not made to handle it," he said.

In fact, investigators frequently run across meth lab waste that is more
acidic than hydrochloric acid.

"It's very, very bad," Gillispie said.

Because they're stored improperly, the chemicals eat away at their
containers' linings, leak out, mix with other chemicals and ignite.

More often, the same chemicals end up dumped into a nearby creek, thrown
out over a hillside or otherwise left in an area where children can come
into contact with it, he said.

Wright said the EPA originally didn't want to get involved in meth lab
investigations because the labs are U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration turf.

Capt. Rick Woodyard, coordinator of the Parkersburg drug task force,
however, convinced him that the meth labs pose a public health and
environmental threat that the EPA can't ignore, Wright said.

"It's a part of the case that wasn't being addressed," he said.

Woodyard said getting the EPA involved has helped the task force get at
least two convictions on environmental charges when there wasn't enough
evidence to charge operators with drug offenses.

The advantage of the environmental approach is that the task force doesn't
have to prove a lab was used to make methamphetamine, which could be long
gone. All it has to prove is that the operator handled or stored hazardous
chemicals without a license.

"It's a very stiff sentence -- just for the illegal dumping or disposal of
hazardous chemicals . . .," Woodyard said. "It probably carries a higher
sentence than the actual drug manufacture itself."