JUDGE GETS AN EARFUL ON POT-GROW PERILS

Officials Invited To Testify At Pair's Sentencing Hearing

They were lined up in a Kitchener courtroom yesterday -- the hydro chief,
the fire captain and the drug cop -- to tell a judge about the effect of
marijuana grows on the community. Justice Colin Westman got to hear about
the potential dangers of the illegal operations, the fires that have been
caused, and the amount of time that's being spent tracking the grows by
police, fire and hydro officials.

Westman had asked a Crown prosecutor to present evidence of the
"implication'' of marijuana grows on the community before sentencing two
people involved in grows on Askin Place in Kitchener and Brewster Place in
Cambridge. Their sentencing was put over to January.

Westman is the same judge who has asked defence lawyers for evidence that
conditional sentences of house arrest will be properly supervised before
agreeing to impose such sentences.

The issue of sentencing for marijuana grows has heated up recently with the
call by city councillors in Kitchener and Waterloo for a minimum of five
years in jail for anyone caught growing marijuana in a residence. So far,
the courts have handed out conditional sentences to be served at home.

Westman heard from Ron Charie, president of the Kitchener-Wilmot Hydro
Commission, who talked about the amount of hydro stolen by people who hook
up bypasses to get around meters and supply electricity to the powerful
lamps used to grow the plants.

"We've always had theft of power, but not to this magnitude,'' Charie said.
He said hydro has lost $179,000 in unpaid hydro since the first
marijuana-grow discoveries in June 2000. The commission has recovered
$40,000 of this.

Hydro and police sometimes get tips about potential grows from alert
neighbours. But increasingly, hydro finds the grows when transformer fuses
blow from overload, Charie said. Once suspicious, hydro officials install
diversion meters to check the actual amount of hydro being used by a home,
he said.

The meters cost $3,000 each. Hydro has purchased two and may add one more.
One staff person has also been assigned full-time just to investigate and
dismantle the bypasses.

"We're spending an inordinate amount of administrative time . . . trying to
handle this situation,'' Charie said.

Darryl Goetz, one of the key Waterloo regional police drug investigators
until he was reassigned last fall, said grow operations consume from 10 to
20 times the amount of hydro a normal home would use.

Recently, there was a fire in the Forest Heights area of Kitchener caused by
a botched attempt to bypass the hydro meter.

"There were a lot of bare wires hanging from the ceiling,'' in the basement
of the home at 718 Westheights Dr., said Tim Bernier, a platoon chief at the
Kitchener fire department. The basement was gutted.

He estimates there have been "half a dozen fires at least'' linked to
marijuana grows. Several children have been found living in the homes.

However, Bernier agreed with defence lawyer Kadir Baksh of Toronto that many
of the homes do not experience fires. Baksh suggested people engaged in
grows would take care to ensure their own safety.

Charie said there's also a danger in these operations of the ground becoming
"energized'' outside these homes if conditions are right. Innocent people,
such as a child running after a ball, could be electrocuted, he said. He
agreed with Baksh that there had been no "casualty'' yet.

"I guess I don't want to go to the spouse of my employees to tell them
they're electrocuted. That's why I take it so seriously,'' Charie said.

Goetz detailed close to two dozen grows busted since May 31 of this year,
the date the first conditional sentence was handed down for marijuana
production. The suggestion was that the light sentence has resulted in a
proliferation of grows. But Goetz agreed with Baksh that he could not assume
all were new operations, set up after May 31.

Goetz said a police officer in Buffalo, where he was lecturing on grows
earlier this year, said they weren't having the same problem there because
anyone caught in such a crime would likely get a stiff jail sentence.