Nightmare mosaic photo from a raid on private land in the King Range National Conservation Area. Photo courtesy Brad Job

I’ve been fascinated by water and the organisms that live in it since I was a child. When three years of sea duty made me fall in love with the ocean, I decided to pursue a degree from HSU in Environmental Resources Engineering, which I completed in 1993.

Since then, my career has focused on water quality and water resources. For the past 10 years I have had the honor and privilege of being part of a team of professionals that steward some of our nations’ most spectacular public land. In this occupation I have also been witness to many environmental sins that have occurred as a result of marijuana cultivation.

As a pragmatic environmentalist, it is not my job to deride marijuana or its use. But, similar to the environmental effects of logging, the problem is not necessarily that one grows pot, it’s about how one grows pot.

Regardless of how one feels about marijuana and its legal status, anybody that understands just a little about aquatic ecosystems has to admit that widespread cultivation has bad consequences for fish. It degrades the quality of our rivers and streams, which to me, are the core of what makes northwest California special.

In reference to one of last week’s cover stories about illegal excavation and un-engineered fill (‘Shocking’ environmental damage from outdoor grows, Eye, Jan. 18) I can attest that the additional input of sediment eroded from grow-related excavations permanently damages habitat for imperiled salmon and trout populations and undoes the benefits of millions of dollars’ worth of watershed restoration work.

However, increased sedimentation is not the only or necessarily the worst environmental consequence of rapacious pot growing out in the hills.

The giant hunk of failing fill is located on private land right above Bear Creek where it exits the King Range NCA could not be in a worse spot as far as fish habitat goes (notice the clear creek in the upper right corner).

Recent research has shown that 80 to 90 percent of the nitrogen in coastal watersheds historically came from the ocean, much of it in the form of return runs of salmon and steelhead. However, dwindling fish populations and environmentally oblivious pot growers have turned that dynamic on its head.

Now, growers dump hundreds of tons of excess fertilizer into these watersheds annually. The most obvious consequence of fertilizer overuse is increased algal growth, which is most likely why toxic concentrations of blue-green algae have been observed in the Eel River in recent summers. Excessive algal growth kills fish and the organisms that they feed upon.

In addition, outdoor grows frequently discharge rodenticides, insecticides and fungicides into the environment; divert springs and creeks for long distances; and leave vast quantities of trash and black poly-pipe behind.

And then there are the diesel dope grows. These operations often improperly and illegally store large quantities of diesel in plastic tanks that are prone to failure. And those that do use metal tanks almost never have secondary containment and often have leaks and spills.

A pile of dumped cannabis root balls, surely laden with fertilizers and other soil amendments, cascades down the banks of Liscom Slough into sensitive marine habitat last week. Photo courtesy Ted Halstead

It is worth noting that fuel distributors that dispense fuel into such tanks are also committing a felony. If anyone wants to observe the environmental consequences of petroleum spills in aquatic ecosystems, they need only to travel to an urban stream to witness the reduced abundance and diversity of invertebrate species, which are the base of most aquatic food webs.

Then consider the water diversions, air and noise pollution from inefficient generators, and the random dumping of fertilizer-laden potting soil. And I can hardly bear to ponder the sad irony of burning fossil fuel to make light to grow plants in a manner that is literally 99 percent inefficient, all while it is warm and sunny outside.

As long as the marijuana status quo and large profit margins remain, it appears inevitable that some of the worst crimes at marijuana gardens will be environmental ones.

The citizen’s suit provision in the Clean Water Act might be a big enough hammer to change some landowners’ behavior if a motivated team of attorneys and environmental scientists were to respond to a specific incident.

However, the sad fact remains that the underground economy is creating really bad consequences for the increasingly fragile ecology of our rivers and streams. But, if this letter makes only one grower reduce their fertilizer and agricultural chemical use or cause less erosion, the time it took to write it will have been well spent.

Sincerely,

Brad Job, P.E.

Environmental Engineer

Arcata

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APD brought multiple vehicles, including a a large, enclosed trailer to the Alliance Road residence. The house is owned by Anthony L. and Denise M. Fraga of Bayside. KLH | Eye

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

GROW HOUSE WARRANT SERVED IN WESTWOOD NEIGHBORHOOD

 During the month of November, while responding to a noise disturbance, an Arcata Police Department officer noticed indications of an indoor marijuana cultivation at a residence in the 2500 Blk of Alliance Rd.

Patrick Michael Hawn

Twenty-seven year old Patrick Michael Hawn of Arcata was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Jail on the following charges:

·         11358 H&S- Cultivation of Marijuana

·         11359 H&S- Possession of Marijuana for Sale

·         11366.5 H&S- Manufacturing of a Controlled Substance

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Evidence gathered during the three alleged Aloha Way grow house busts. The yellow and blue items at right are bubble hash extractors from 1135a Aloha Way. Arcata Police photo

Gary Quillen

Kevin L. Hoover

Eye Editor

ARCATA – Swamped with promising tips about neighborhood grow houses and with no special events or other major crimes to draw away staff resources, APD continued its weekly series of cannabis busts last Wednesday with a trio of takedowns.

It’s been three years since police raided a grow house on Aloha Way off West End Road. Last Wednesday, Nov. 23, they were back in the subdivision known as Plum Village, harvesting another clump of low-hanging grow house fruit.

And in another case of threeness, all three homes – 1135, 1135A and 1163A Aloha Way – are owned by Jesse Wedemeyer of Arcata, who also owned a grow house at 1191 Aloha Way raided Sept. 4, 2008.

Daniel Sansome

In addition, Wedemeyer owns three other houses on the block, at 1100, 1177, and 1205 Aloha Way. He could not be reached for comment.

APD, with assistance from the Humboldt County Drug Task Force and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office served all three warrants simultaneously.

Illegal marijuana grows were discovered in all three homes. The cultivation operations ranged in size, with the largest housing over 750 plants. Officers found over 25 pounds of processed marijuana at one of the homes packaged in individual one pound bundles. In addition, officers found over one pound of concentrated cannabis and a small amount of suspected cocaine during the searches.

The following suspects were arrested in connection with the illegal growing operations:

• Gary Ramon Quillen, 31, of Arcata, cultivation of

Dante Magnani

marijuana and possession of marijuana for sale.

• Daniel Lee Sansom, 30, of Arcata, cultivation of marijuana,  possession of marijuana for sale,  maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance and possession of concentrated cannabis.

• Dante E. Magnani, 27, of Arcata,  cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and  maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance.

• Caitlin M. Enright, 24, of Arcata, cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale.

APD Det. Sgt. Todd Dokweiler said that the homes had been crudely adapted to cannabis cultivation via the usual means – holes knocked through walls to route wiring and irrigation, large ventilation holes cut in ceilings and electrical panels hacked to add capacity. A number of ballasts had been located in the homes’ attics.

Caitlin Enright

“The electrical here was probably in the top 10 for how much wiring they’d done,” Dokweiler said.

City building inspectors discovered numerous building code violations at all three residences, which necessitated the immediate disconnection of electrical service.

Despite their proximity and common ownership, he had no information that the grows were related. “It’s not clear that that’s what’s going on,” he said.

Dokweiler said the air on Aloha Way was thick with green cannabis stench apparently emanating from other grow houses in the area. “There were definitely other grows in the vicinity,” Dokweiler said. “We’ll be looking at them.”

He said fresh grow house tips come in every day, and that he intends to maintain the enforcement rate. “It’ll keep up,” he said. “We still have a long list.”

**************

City of Arcata

PRESS RELEASE

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

THREE GROW HOUSE WARRANTS SERVED

• Gary Ramon Quillen 31 of Arcata, 11358 H&S cultivation of marijuana and 11359 H&S possession of marijuana for sale.
• Daniel Lee Sansom 30 of Arcata, 11358 H&S cultivation of marijuana, 11359 H&S possession of marijuana for sale, 11366.5 H&S maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance and 11357(a) H&S possession of concentrated cannabis.
• Dante E. Magnani 27 of Arcata,  11358 H&S cultivation of marijuana, 11359 H&S possession of marijuana for sale and 11366.5 H&S maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance.
• Caitlin M. Enright 24 of Arcata, 11358 H&S cultivation of marijuana, 11359 H&S possession of marijuana for sale.

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APD Photo

Note: This afternoon APD took out a cannabis grow house on Panorama Drive which included a small peyote grow. More details to come; meanwhile, here’s the raw, unedited press release. – Ed.

PRESS RELEASE 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

WARRANT SERVED ON PANORAMA DR GROW HOUSE

In response to neighborhood complaints, officers from the Arcata Police Department served a search warrant at a residence in the 1400 Blk of Panorama Dr on Wednesday morning.

Upon entering the residence, officers located a marijuana growing operation consisting of nearly 200 growing marijuana plants. Over 20 pounds of processed marijuana was located in the home along with one pound of physilociben mushrooms, a number of peyote cacti, 5 grams ofDimethyltryptamine (DMT), two semi-automatic handguns, one semi-automatic rifle and $8,000 in cash.

Elizabeth April Martin 38 and Alexander Schaffer 35 both of Arcata were arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Jail on the following charges:

·         11358 H&S- Cultivation of Marijuana

·         11359 H&S- Possession of Marijuana for Sale

·         11366.5 H&S- Manufacturing of a Controlled Substance

·         11377 H&S- Possession of a Controlled Substance

·         11364 H&S- Possession of Drug Paraphernalia

·         11357(a) H&S- Possession of Concentrated Cannabis

City of Arcata building inspectors discovered numerous building code violations at the residence, which necessitated the immediate disconnection of electrical service.

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APD officers load up a trailer with evidence from the H Street grow warehouse. Photos by KLH | Eye

Kevin L. Hoover

Eye Editor

ARCATA – Arcata Police barged into three cannabis grows last Wednesday and Thursday, arresting people and taking their marijuana crops away for evidence.

On Wednesday, Nov. 9, in response to neighborhood complaints, APD officers served a search warrant at a residence at 2034 Fredrick Avenue, a house owned by Ralph M. Nelson and Emma F. Nelson of Eureka. There they found two separate marijuana growing operations inside the home.

An APD press release said the first grow was within current guidelines for medicinal marijuana cultivation. The second growing operation was determined to be a “for profit” cultivation and not in compliance with current guidelines. The growing plants and cultivation equipment were seized.

Sixty-eight growing marijuana plants, nearly five pounds of processed marijuana, $3,500 cash, over three ounces of concentrated cannabis and one firearm were seized from the home.

Four subjects were arrested in connection with the warrant: Willard Remington, 20, of Arcata, on charges of cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and possession of concentrated cannabis; Madeline Grace Arnold, 18, of Arcata on charges of possession of marijuana for sale and possession of concentrated cannabis; Christopher Marcus Barnes, 40, of Berkeley, on charges of possession of concentrated cannabis; and Christopher Andrew Simpson, 28, of Arcata, on a charge of probation violation.

Daniel O'Brien is led away in handcuffs. KLH | Eye

The next day, two for one

A small caravan of Arcata Police vehicles departed Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. from the City Hall parking lot. Their first stop was 840 A Street, where, in response to neighbor complaints, a suspected grow house was raided.

Among the things neighbors noticed was this a pickup truck parked outside, its bed strewn with perlite soil amendment and bags containing cannabis root balls.

There, APD says officers discovered a large marijuana growing and processing operation inside the home. They seized 405 growing marijuana plants, nearly 15 pounds of processed marijuana and a large amount of cultivation equipment from the home.

Daniel Raymond O’Brien, 30, of Arcata was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for alleged cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance.

APD Det. Sgt. Todd Dokweiller said the house was pre-wired for cannabis cultivation, with electrical subpanels installed in the rooms.

The unkempt 840 A Street house.

He said the home’s garage holds a studio apartment with a bathroom and loft. “Ten years ago, a student would have lived in it,” Dokweiler said. Now, he noted, it’s much more profitable to use the same space for cannabis growing.

As with many other grow houses, non-cultivated space was neglected and messy. A view of the kitchen through the open front door offered a view of piles of papers, an open bottle of Seagram’s 7 Crown whiskey and a bong. Cupboards contained large ziploc bags stuffed with cannabis buds.

The view through the front door.

As officers processed the scene, neighbors came over to thank them for raiding the smelly, unkempt house. Property records list the house’s owner as Robert K. Eckart of Arcata.

The house is next door to two homes once occupied by well-known, now-deceased Arcatans –  “Orick” Johnny Antonioli and Albert Knapp, Arcata’s Patriotic Legend.

After O’Brien was led away in handcuffs, his pit bull Izzy was prepared for transport to the county animal shelter. The large, old pit bull was clearly frightened and confused as officers used a catchpole to transfer him to a cage.

Further information led officers to an industrial building at 105 lower H Street. After prying the door open, officers found two rooms built within an industrial space, the rooms housing an elaborate commercial marijuana growing site.

A frightened and confused Izzy is caged for transport to the county animal shelter.

The cannabis had recently been harvested, but more than 169 harvested marijuana plants were located drying in the building.

Police say the industrial building, which is owned by Kenneth L. Francis of Greenview, Calif., was being used as the primary cultivation site, with the residence on A Street serving as a processing location.

Officers seized 169 drying marijuana plants and 22 grow lights, along with other miscellaneous equipment used in the cultivation operation from the H Street location. The floor of the building was strewn with O’Brien’s personal property and papers, including veterinary bills for Izzy.

The cannabis, grow lights and ballasts were loaded onto a flatbed trailer for transport to APD’s evidence locker.

The lower H Street grow warehouse.

Dokweiler said cannabis growers are typically financed by unknown backers, who enjoy some profit-sharing arrangement. Once the case is adjudicated, the backer often bankrolls the grower in a new cannabis cultivation operation.

APD’s Special Services unit has a list of 10 to 15 other suspected grows it plans to search in weeks to come, Dokweiler said.

*****

Note: Below is the original, less detailed story posted immediately after last week’s grow busts. – Ed

Kevin L. Hoover

Eye Editor

ARCATA – A small caravan of Arcata Police vehicles departed Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. from the City Hall parking lot.Their first stop was 840 A Street, where, in response to neighbor complaints, a suspected grow house was raided.

There, APD says officers discovered a large marijuana growing and processing operation inside the home. They seized 405 growing marijuana plants, nearly 15 pounds of processed marijuana and a large amount of cultivation equipment from the home.

APD Det. Sgt. Todd Dokweiller said the house was pre-wired for cannabis cultivation, with electrical subpanels installed in many of the rooms. Property records list the owner as Robert K. Eckart of Arcata.

Further information was discovered that led officers to an industrial building at 105 lower H Street. After prying the door open, officers found two rooms built within an industrial space, the rooms housing an elaborate commercial marijuana growing site. The cannabis had recently been harvested, but more than 169 harvested marijuana plants were located drying in the building.

Police say the industrial building, owned by Kenneth L. Francis of Greenview, Calif., was being used as the primary cultivation site, with the residence on A Street serving as a processing location.

Officers seized 169 drying marijuana plants and 22 grow lights, along with other miscellaneous equipment used in the cultivation operation from the H Street location.

Daniel Raymond O’Brien, 30, of Arcata was arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility for alleged cultivation of marijuana, possession of marijuana for sale and maintaining a house for the manufacture of a controlled substance.

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GREENVIEW – On Wednesday, Nov. 9, in response to neighborhood complaints, officers from the Arcata Police Department served a search warrant at a residence in the 2000 block of Fredrick Ave.

The officers discovered two separate marijuana growing operations inside the home.

The first marijuana growing operation was determined to be within current guidelines for medicinal marijuana cultivation. The second growing operation was determined to be a “for profit” cultivation and not in compliance with current guidelines. The growing plants and cultivation equipment were seized.

Sixty-eight growing marijuana plants, nearly five pounds of processed marijuana, $3,500 cash, over three ounces of concentrated cannabis and one firearm were seized from the home.

Four subjects were arrested in connection with the warrant:

•   Willard Remington, 20 of Arcata

11358 H&S Cultivation of Marijuana

11359 H&S Possession of Marijuana for sale

11357(a) H&S Possession of Concentrated Cannabis

•   Madeline Grace Arnold, 18 of Arcata

11359 H&S Possession of Marijuana for sale

11357(a) H&S Possession of Concentrated Cannabis

•  Christopher Marcus Barnes, 40 of Berkeley

11357(a) H&S Possession of Concentrated Cannabis

•  Christopher Andrew Simpson, 28 of Arcata

1203.2 PC Probation Violation

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Eye Correspondent

HUMBOLDT – A researcher from Humboldt State University’s Schatz Energy Center has told county supervisors that indoor marijuana grows consume too much electricity and cultivation should move outdoors or into greenhouses.

Peter Lehman of the Schatz Energy Center acknowledged that his findings and recommendations don’t deal with the issue of marijuana legality but he warned that the county’s residential power consumption will continue to be skewed if the indoor-to-outdoor transition isn’t made.

Speaking to the Board of Supervisors at its Oct. 18 meeting, Lehman related an increase in the county’s home electricity use since 1990 to the passage of Proposition 215, the state’s medical marijuana law.

He said the electricity used by residential indoor grows could power an additional 13,000 homes in Humboldt and it consumes 10 percent of “all the electricity we use in Humboldt County.”

Statewide, Lehmann continued, indoor grows consume about three percent of total electricity.

“We are over three times greater than that,” he said.  Based on that data, Lehman estimated that the county’s indoor grows pump 20,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year.

Lehman briefly described his methodology as being based on “talking to people, we talked with various law officials to get an idea of the number of grows.”

Diesel generator-powered indoor grows are even less efficient and add another 20,000 metric tons of carbon annually, he continued.

His solution is simple. “Marijuana is a plant – we can grow it outdoors,” Lehman told supervisors. “You use fewer pesticides and fungicides… and you use less energy.”

He referred to a “controversy” on the quality of marijuana grown indoors versus outside and said a colleague at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory interviewed three experts who said the two methodologies produce comparable results.

Lehman also said PG&E inadvertently enables the power glut by enrolling growers, whose cannabis income isn’t reported, in its discount program for low-income customers. He suggested that PG&E establish a cap on the amount of power customers in the program can use.

Board Chair Mark Lovelace pointed out that without demonstrable income, the growers can claim the discount. And he said the federal government unintentionally encourages it by preventing growers from reporting their true income.

“This is one of the places where I feel the federal government’s policy is at odds with doing what is actually in the public’s interest,” Lovelace continued.

He added that “best practices” to reduce power use could be carried out through state regulation, but with the feds hovering and making crackdown threats, “There’s no incentive to do more than the bare minimum.”

During public comment, Jesse Stills, a partner in a collective that’s seeking a county permit in McKinleyville, said his project was going to use an “onsite solar farm” but federal enforcement has been an obstacle to gaining investors.

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A den of destruction.

Previously, Frank Festag of CSI Decon revealed the more macabre aspects of crime scene cleanup. This week he discusses the aftermath of drug manufacture. Photos used with this story are from a 2003 Arcata Eye story about a ruined grow house on Terrace Avenue. Second of two parts. – Ed.

Kevin L. Hoover

Eye Editor

HUMBOLDT – After the police have swarmed a grow house or meth lab, arrested the occupants and hauled away the contraband and associated equipment, the domicile is often structurally altered, electrically sparky, soaked through with mold and/or toxins and unfit for habitation.

Sooner or later, the owner surveys the wreckage and musters the will to fix the place up. Depending on the level of devastation and the owner’s skill set, he or she may just decide to throw money at the problem by hiring people to restore the place to something people who aren’t in the trade would want to live in.

While any number of carpenters, painters and carpet layers are available, who is there to remove the reek and purge the noxious chemical residue from a drug house?

Enter Frank Festag.

“It’s like, who’s gonna clean this up?” he observes. “That’s pretty much the discussion.”

He’s been brought in on all manner of squalid, noxious situations, and well knows the breed. “There’s never a ‘typical’ – never a place that’s the same as any other,” he says. “Every place has its idiosyncrasies. The only thing constant is the trash.”

Drug houses are usually operated by someone other than the owner, and treated with corresponding disrespect.

“The meth labs are usually a gut job,” he says. “They have to be taken down to the bare bones of the house because drywall absorbs the chemicals. The insulation acts like a giant sponge.”

Not that tweakers would care much, but the stuff they snort is usually laden with toxic material. “They use cadmium from batteries, even gasoline,” Festag notes.

The methmakers themselves are a pathetic lot, he says, having fallen down a slippery slope of bad decisionmaking. He can tell by the residue of their speed-engulfed lives.

“You can see and absorb all of who they are from all the stuff left behind,” Festag said. “They’re nasty, they’re deplorable and there’s no regard whatsoever for where they are – near schoolchildren, no regard whatsoever.”

The tweakers fall prey to compulsive behavior. “I’ve never seen one that hasn’t been a hoarding situation,” Festag says. “I don’t think there’s such a thing as a clean meth lab on the planet.”

Some people just know how to live.

And – surprise, surprise – it’s not at all like Hollywood depictions of drug manufacture. “In the movies they’re walking around in lab coats with masks; tables of people working and the girls are topless,” he says. “I’m like, ‘Where is this happening?’”

Continued Festag, “We don’t have that out here. They do it in trailers, little porta-sheds, mainly kitchens. You go in and see where all the stuff has been cooked on the stove next to the box of Trix and half-eaten cereal. You go, ‘Geez, breakfast of champions.’”

Factory life isn't pretty.

Even the cannabis grow houses are often ravaged to a similar degree through a combination of neglect and clumsy modifications. “The grow rooms are fun,” says the chipper Festag. “PGE comes in and goes, ‘pull the meter.’ You can’t blame ’em when you come into a place where the wires are melted and the outlets are cooked.”

Some of the cannabis patients’ health-giving “medicine” is created in wholly insalubrious conditions.

“The biggest health risk they pose is the different types of molds and the chemicals,” Festag says. “The bloom formulas, the grow formulas, the in-between formulas. Some of this stuff, when you mix it, it’s extremely dangerous. You have a severe health hazard.”

The "whatever" approach to housekeeping.

The house gets treated like the factory it really is. “The floors are usually ruined,” Festag says. “Some have plastic, but the plastic gets cut and the carpet starts to mold out. Others have no carpet –five gallon buckets on the floor with chemicals leaching out, ruining the floors and the carpets.”

Festag may be amused by the property destruction – after all, it fattens his paycheck. But as a grandpa, he gets upset at the human toll, especially on children.

“They have kids and dogs running around in this,” he laments. “You can mess up your own life if you want to be a grower, but don’t involve the kids and dogs and make them ingest all the chemicals. It’s just not right.”

The reclusive growers, busy with their crops, often don’t treat themselves very well, either.

“You see that they have had a hard life,” Festag said. “They like not doing the normal things like making meals. The places are always littered with fast food bags. You see babies’ bedrooms full of hooks where they were drying the pot.”

A little something for the kids.

Festag’s descriptions replicate exactly the images of grow house interiors submitted to the newspaper by outraged landlords – homes strewn with garbage and cannabis debris, cigarette butts ground into the carpet, pizza boxes and beer 12-packs stacked up on kitchen counters.

“Nobody’s life in those places in anything like what I’d call good,” Festag observes. “They have dressers with stains from all the chemicals they put on them. They leave giant holes in the walls. The wiring is always on the verge of catching fire any second.”

The magic picture box machine got a lot of attention, if not care.

Having to stay in to tend and guard their valuable “girls,” the growers often turn to electronic amusements. A flatscreen surrounded by piles of action-adventure DVDs is typical.

“They like toys – big RC cars, big screen TVs, boxes of DVDs of action movies and Ninja stuff and every kind of Xbox and Sony thing,” Festag said.

He remembers a house in Valley West where the landlord discovered a grow and gave the five college students an eviction notice. “You’d be surprised at how the illegal 215ers react when they know the cops are gonna be there the next day,” he says. “The stuff they leave behind is phenomenal.”

A drywall contractors' delight.

“In the backyard, there were maybe a hundred black trash bags. They had never taken out their trash. And all the trash bags were moving – they were full of rats. I was blown away.”

There was mold on all the carpets,” he recalls. “It was horrendous. And they all got away,. They all went back to their little places in Santa Barbara or L.A. It’s like, ‘Sue me, I’m gone.”

Between the reek and the mold, Festag often has to rip out all the drywall to prepare the home for reconstruction. “You tear it down to the bare frame,” he says. “It pays well.”

Frank Festag. KLH | Eye

And that’s the freaky niche that provides Frank Festag a living in Humboldt County.

I live a very humble, meager life,” he says. “I don’t have a lot of fancy this and that. I haven’t left the county in years.”

“Everybody’s pretty much in awe when you tell them what you do,,” he says. Every person that meets me and finds out what I do, they go, ‘Wow, I never thought I’d meet someone who does something like this.”

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VALLEY WEST – In response to numerous neighbor complaints, Arcata Police Department officers served a search warrant on a suspected illegal marijuana cultivation operation in Valley West last Wednesday, Aug. 24.

The warrant was served on a double wide mobile home at 1122 Cedar Drive in the Valley West Mobile Estates park. Inside, officers discovered a sophisticated indoor marijuana cultivation operation that utilized the entire domicile.

No one lived there, and there was no evidence that the home was used for any purpose other than marijuana cultivation.

“This one was a little different,” said Det. Sgt. Todd Dokweiler. “It was not set up for living. There was no place to sleep, nothing like that.”

Officers seized about 40 pounds of dried marijuana in various stages of processing and  nearly 500 growing marijuana plants along with a large amount of cultivation equipment.

No one was at the residence at the time the warrant was served and no arrests were made.

“It was probably someone from out of state working with somebody locally,” Dokweiler said.

Police are still investigating to determine who owns or owned the mobile home, and arrests may be in the offing. “It looks like there’s going to be more connections,” Dokweiler said.

City of Arcata building inspectors discovered numerous building code violations at the residence, which necessitated the immediate disconnection of electrical service.

If you suspect illegal drug activity in your neighborhood, please contact the Arcata Police Department at (707) 822-2428.

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The smoke damage was clearly visible from Q Street, looking across the Gilardoni property which was recently proposed as a site for a goat dairy. KLH | Eye

Kevin L. Hoover
Eye Editor

IVERSON AVENUE – Just weeks after rebuffing a proposed goat dairy on neighboring property on grounds that it would harm the neighborhood, the residents of Iverson Avenue awoke last Wednesday morning to find that industrial agriculture of another form had brought unexpected fuss and bother to the ’hood.

An APD officer outside the fire-damaged house. The fire wasn't in the room with the smoked window; it was in a windowless warren of concealed grow rooms. KLH | Eye

At about 4:30 a.m., a structure fire was reported at 1748 Iverson Avenue, a house owned by Grant Kimbell of Arcata. Arcata Fire personnel arrived within four minutes to find the two residents, Sonja Marie Bush, 28, and Darren Joseph Weeth, 34, standing outside with their two dogs. All were unharmed.

According to Fire Chief John McFarland, Weeth was covered in black soot from an unsuccessful attempt to extinguish the fire. He refused medical treatment.

Firefighters quickly located the source of the blaze in a hidden warren of rooms upstairs, and put it out. The fire had broken out in one of eight rooms in the house that were dedicated to cannabis cultivation and processing. The grow rooms were concealed behind a built-in bookcase in a bedroom suite.

A view through a side door revealed one of the processing rooms, this one used for drying. KLH | Eye

“The bookcase magically moved on a track to a reveal a three-room grow,” McFarland said. “It was nicely built as a grow room, and well designed.” The upstairs grow rooms were windowless, and the smoke eventually billowed from a window in an upstairs back room.

McFarland said a grow light and box fan which had been suspended from the ceiling “both ended up on the floor, burning.” Weeth told firefighters he had been awakened by a smoke alarm.

With the fire put out and electricity disconnected, police were notified of the large-scale cannabis grow, the residence was secured and a search warrant obtained. Come daylight, officers returned and discovered a “sophisticated” indoor marijuana cultivation operation inside the home and in a detached garage.

A well-used air filter was among the industrial cannabis growing apparatus hauled away for evidence by APD. KLH | Eye

Nearly 800 growing marijuana plants, 80 pounds of dried marijuana in various stages of processing, three firearms and nearly $2,000 in cash were discovered and seized.

A second unit attached to the house was used for processing. Some 21 grow lights were seized, with the total wattage far in excess of the 1,200 watts allowed under Arcata’s Prop 215 guidelines.

Bush and Weeth were arrested and booked into the Humboldt County Correctional Facility on felony charges of cultivation of marijuana and cultivation of marijuana for sales. They were released the next day, and were seen removing personal property from the darkened house.

The firearms, a shotgun, hunting rifle and 9mm pistol, were all legal. However, it is illegal to possess firearms in the context of illegal drug activity, and Police Chief Tom Chapman said it will be up to the District Attorney’s Office to decide whether to add weapons charges.

Property owner Grant Kimbell, who once maintained an office in Jacoby’s Storehouse as a property manager and handyman, was contacted out of town and notified of the blaze. He did not return a phone message.

McFarland said the house had been remodeled in 2007, with the grow rooms likely installed at that time. “I’m sure that this is not a surprise to anyone involved,” McFarland said of the secret rooms.

Along with the building code violations from the illegal modifications, the house suffered further damage when water from the fire response in the upstairs grow rooms saturated the living room ceiling. KLH | Eye

Chapman said the electrical service for the cannabis grow was relatively professional, compared to the usual slapdash rigs APD finds at grow houses. But it was nonetheless unpermitted and dangerous.

The City has issued Kimbell a Notice of Nuisance listing multiple violations of the Uniform Housing Code, California Electrical Code, California Mechanical Code, California Building Code and Arcata Municipal Code.

The eventual grow house back when it was being built in 1947. Merle Shuster photo courtesy HSU Library Humboldt County Collection

Building Official Dean Renfer said that in addition to code violations involving the electrical system, the hidden rooms may have structurally compromised the home. He is concerned that the extensive modifications may be placing an excessive load on a joist.

Kimbell must have a licensed electrical contractor make an inspection and list violations. In this case, inspection by a structural engineer is also being required.

Housekeeping wasn't the central priority in this grow house. KLH | Eye

An illegal ventilation system installed to service the cannabis crop will have to be removed, and a tent canopy in the backyard must be removed. All the violations will have to be corrected before the nuisance designation is lifted.

Even more repair work will be required because of water damage during the fire response. Water could be seen through the home’s open door seeping through the living room ceiling and staining a beam.

The residents were apparently living in and around areas of the home dedicated to cannabis growing. As with many grow houses, housekeeping appeared not to be a priority, with trash and debris strewn around on the floor and grow-related items stacked up on counters.

APD heaped grow equipment in the living room prior to hauling it off for evidence. KLH | Eye

If you suspect illegal drug activity in your neighborhood, contact the Arcata Police Department at (707)-822-2428.

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