Pubdate: Fri, 30 Aug 2002 Source: Lancaster News, The (SC) Copyright: 2002 The Lancaster News Contact: http://www.thelancasternews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2509 Note: also listed as a contact Author: Jenny Arnold SECRET GARDEN YIELDS $13.6 MILLION IN POT Officers used machetes, hatchets and off-road vehicles to reach a secret garden of marijuana that yielded $13.6 million worth of the cash crop Monday. No arrests have been made and the find is still under investigation by the Lancaster County Sheriff's Department, Sheriff Johnny Cauthen said Tuesday. The land belongs to a hunt club but Cauthen said he feels the owners had nothing to do with the unusual crop found there. The plants were cut down Monday and the harvest is being kept at an undisclosed location until it can be burned later this week. The marijuana was discovered by a National Guard pilot flying over Green Road near S.C. 200 late Thursday afternoon. These fly-overs are standard procedure a few times a year to look for marijuana plots, Cauthen said. On Friday, a helicopter from SLED scoped out the area and officers from Lancaster County drug and violent crimes task forces headed into the heavily wooded area on foot. They found three separate plots, up to several acres in size each, about 50 yards from each other containing 6,820 budding plants 6 to 8 feet high. The plants were nearly ready for harvest and the growers probably planned to have the crop out of there before hunting season began, Cauthen said. Closer inspection showed how carefully the marijuana farmers tended the plants. They cleared the three areas of large trees along a creek bed, then cut up the trees and hauled them away. Large holes were dug near the creek to help irrigate the plants. "These were large holes, you could lose a pickup truck in some of them," Cauthen said. "And they were dug by hand. You couldn't get a backhoe through there." To keep deer or humans away, the plots were enclosed with chicken wire. The grass was kept trimmed and pesticide cans found at another surprising discovery, a crude camp near the garden, indicate chemicals were used to keep the grass and weeds down. Fertilizer was also used on the plants. "They knew what they were doing - this was no fly-by-night operation," Cauthen said of the unknown suspects. "The rows were straight. From the air, it looked like fields you would see in the Midwest, with corn for acres and acres. They had been babying these plants all summer," Cauthen said. At what officers are calling the operation's base camp, a tent sat three feet off the ground, covered by a green tarp. It couldn't be seen from the air. Inside were sleeping bags and a camping stove, among loads of Kool-Aid cans, flour tortilla wrappers and other trash, evidence that the camp was used for days at a time while the suspects tended their crop. Hammocks were strung up in nearby trees. Officers had a difficult time getting to the crop on foot, Cauthen said, having to hack their way through the brush at least a mile from the road and walk along creek beds to find it. In Saturday's oppressive heat, the officers wore body armor and carried backpacks and rifles into the woods to watch the crop all day, waiting for suspects to come to the field. "If we hadn't had two or three days of rain, someone would have probably gone down there to water the plants," Cauthen said. "But our guys going down in there, or the helicopter, could have spooked them." A team of drug and violent crimes task force officers, SLED agents and an agent from the federal Drug Enforcement Agency met at Lancaster County Airport on Monday morning, where pilots from SLED flew in with their helicopter. A couple of officers boarded to videotape the fields from the air. From there, officers left in pickup trucks hauling ATVs for the woods. They invaded the forest on foot, on four-wheelers and a SLED off-road vehicle capable of climbing over felled trees. The day's jungle-like humidity didn't slow the officers as they whacked down the plants and tied them into 20-plant bundles to be hauled out of the woods. Cauthen got his first look, an aerial view, at the find Monday. A DC3 plane carrying bales of marijuana confiscated in 1979 after it landed at the airport, and small fields of 100 to 200 plants found over the years here didn't prepare him for what he saw. "I wasn't expecting it to be like it was," Cauthen said. "I've never seen anything like this in my career. This is something you see in training tapes. The best part is that we were able to get this off the street." SLED or DEA officials were unable to say whether Monday's cache was the largest seized in the state's history. Last month, 4,000 plants were collected in Horry County, said DEA Assistant Special Agent John Ozaluk, but the last large bust in the state was in 1979 when 18,000 plants were seized. So far in 2002, DEA's marijuana eradication program, which provides funding for drug eradication for state and local agencies, has collected four times more plants than last year. "This is one situation where the program worked," Ozaluk said. - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens