'TWO OR THREE' BEHIND POT HAUL

Suspects In Highrise Grow Operation Are Locals Who Are Unknown To Police

Police say "two or three suspects" are behind the largest marijuana
grow operation ever discovered in Hamilton.

Eleven thousand pot plants, worth a cool $11 million, were being
grown in 50 apartments scattered through three east end highrises.
It had been operating for at least two months, and may have started
half a year ago.

A neighbour tipped off local patrol officers five weeks ago.

"Someone came forward and said, 'Something's happening here,'"
Inspector Rick Wills, head of investigative services, said yesterday.

The elite drugs and vice unit conducted surveillance before
obtaining search warrants for six apartments at 11 Grandville Ave.,
known as the Rita Court Apartments.

Wills said the building's owner had been co-operating with police.
The successful initial raids allowed police to search out other
apartment farms, and with the property owners' help, located another
six apartments full of pot plants in the building.

Police put together a list of apartments throughout three buildings
owned by Di Cenzo Management Inc. "that had been rented in a similar fashion."

Wills would not reveal if one person or a small group had rented all
the units, but said the list kept turning up apartments stuffed with plants.

"It kept going and going. We didn't think it was that extensive."

The suspects are local people who are unknown to police,he said.

The multimillion-dollar urban drug farm is a new type of
sophisticated operation hidden behind boarded-up windows with
exterior venting, fans and grow lamps in highrises teeming with tenants.

It was also extremely hazardous. Electrical cables jacked into the
apartments' high-voltage stove outlet snaked across floors wet with
liquid fertilizer and watering.

Hydro officials say they found a hot-wired fuse box in one of the
raided apartments that had caught fire, had been extinguished, and
then replaced with another fuse box as dangerously overloaded as the first.

"There is no question a lot of organization went into it," Wills said.

When police smashed open the doors, they found the floors covered
with plants growing in pots of soil, with grow lights strung above
them, and electric wires snaking everywhere.

The haul:

* 2,166 plants in 12 apartments at 11 Grandville Ave.

* 4,572 plants in 18 apartments at 50 Violet Dr.

* 4,104 plants in 18 apartments at 77 Delawana Dr.

Police are still counting plants found in two more apartments at Delawana.

Hydro officials say these pot farms illegally draw large amounts of
electricity, but are very hard to detect.

An average apartment pot farm will have 12 to 17 growth lights
running 12 hours a day, said Sandy Manners, corporate communications
director of Horizon Utilities.

A grow op could use up about 6,000 kilowatt hours per month, she
said. "That compares to the average apartment resident who goes
through 450 to 500 kilowatt hours a month."

The problem, she said, is that each of these buildings has a single
meter recording all electricity usage, and there are too many
variables affecting power drain in highrises.

"Is it an old building, a good building with new insulation, do they
have electric heating in units, do they each have washers and dryers?"

The operations, spread across three buildings, likely did not all
begin drawing electricity at the same time, she said.

"If they'd brought in truckloads of these things overnight and went
from nothing to something, then, sure, that would flag in our system."