‘Speed’ Raids : Drug Chefs’ Landlords Get the Bill

Donna Newman and Bill Blocher expected the house they bought for $13,800 from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide a steady rental income when they retired.

What they didn’t expect was a letter from the sheriff’s office, ominously headed: “Notice of Potential for Unknown Health Hazard.”

Blocher had let his son move into the aging, two-story frame house, and police said the son and four other people had used it as a lab for making methamphetamine, or “speed,” an illegal, crystalline powder that has an effect something like that of cocaine.

The warning letter arrived June 15, five days after police had raided the house. Because potentially toxic chemicals are used to make “meth,” suddenly, Newman and her husband were absentee caretakers of a building that might be contaminated.

“Speed-cookers,” once found mainly in Texas and California, have migrated to the Pacific Northwest in such large numbers that Oregon and Washington now are third and fourth in terms of having a severe meth problem.

“It’s the moonshine of the ‘80s,” Lew Kittle of the Washington state Department of Ecology said of the growing popularity of “crank,” as it is called on the street. Its migration has left an increasing number of property owners in the West with problems similar to Newman’s and Blocher’s.

Bill Wallway of Battle Ground, in southwest Washington, said he has been losing $650 a month in rent from his two mobile homes since they were raided in August. One of the $10,000 trailers--the one used for cooking the meth--is so contaminated, health officials say, that it cannot be salvaged and probably will have to be buried in a landfill.

“I don’t feel too good,” Wallway, a self-employed builder, said. “I’m 50 years old. I depended on this (rental income) because we’re not getting any younger. . . . It’s something a person don’t have happen to him every day. It just kinda knocks you to the floor.”

In nearby Camas, Mindy Owens says she suffered from migraine headaches, nausea and diarrhea after moving into a house that had been used as meth cooker. She and her family moved out months later, but she said she may sue the former owner, a bank that had foreclosed on the property. The bank claims that Owens moved out because she couldn’t follow through on purchase terms.

Methamphetamine is “cooked” from potentially toxic chemicals, and the chefs are neither chemists nor likely to be concerned about public safety.

“What we are concerned about are the unknowns,” Kittle said. “These guys who are making meth are not textbook chemists with Ph.D.s. These are guys doing their business while they’re high.”

Most meth operations, police say, are controlled by outlaw motorcycle gangs. They do their cooking in remote trailers, cheap motels, vans parked in forests, dilapidated houses on dead-end dirt roads.

Oregon law enforcement officials busted 102 meth operations in 1986. This year, that number could double. Two years ago, 14 labs were raided in Washington; this year, the State Patrol expects to find 100 cookers. And in Idaho, where meth labs were rare two years ago, authorities found 17 of them last year.

The proliferation of this highly mobile activity was a major impetus behind the formation of the Northwest Tri-State Narcotics Law Enforcement Council, a cooperative program announced with fanfare in July.

Northwestern police officials seem to agree that much of the influx of meth began when California started to crack down on it several years ago. When Oregon last year restricted sales and distribution of the “precursor” chemicals needed to make meth, many lab operators moved to Washington and Idaho and those states reacted by passing their own laws, effective this summer.

Meth is popular because it is cheap to produce--much cheaper than cocaine.

“You could set up a lab for $500, and for $500 you could probably make $50,000 in crank,” Kittle said. Meth recently has sold at $10,000 to $12,000 a pound, about $2,000 a pound more than cocaine, according to Kittle.

There are about seven ways to make meth--underground manuals tell how it’s done--and the process usually takes just a few days. The precursor chemicals are readily available by mail from wholesale chemical suppliers. You also need standard lab equipment such as a round-bottom flask, a reflux tube, a funnel and a heat source.

Although cooking meth can be dangerous--the precursor chemicals are highly volatile--it is what is left after a lab is shut down that is causing environmental, safety and legal concerns.

Some police officials refuse to enter meth lab sites for fear of exposure to something toxic. “I won’t send my men in there. It’s too dangerous,” Detective Sgt. John Weaver of the Spokane Regional Drug Task Force said.

Contractors Clean Up

When the task force busted a mobile meth lab in September, it called a U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency chemist from San Francisco to remove the remaining chemicals from the van, and a private contractor was hired to clean up.

State authorities may seek recovery of cleanup costs from the responsible parties, but most often, the property owner and other taxpayers end up footing the bill.

Washington’s Ecology Department has spent more than $300,000 this year on meth lab cleanups, Capt. Frank Russell, investigative assistance division commander for the State Patrol, said. Each cleanup averages about $12,000.

Law enforcement officials are responsible for removing any obvious hazard from a crime scene, but the cleanup is the responsibility of the property owner or occupant.

Newman dialed a toll-free number she saw on a TV news report about hazardous-waste disposal, and was referred to an Oregon contractor. She didn’t know where else to turn.

Men in Coveralls

On a hot August weekend, three men in protective coveralls entered the house and hand-wiped all walls, floors and ceilings with a neutralizing solution, soap and water. Carpets were steam-cleaned twice. The house had to be aired out for several weeks, then tested for residual contamination.

It cost the couple about $4,000--more than a fourth of what they had paid for the house. In a sense, they may be more fortunate than most owners of such properties.

Because meth leftovers are a relatively new problem, officials aren’t sure precisely what risks they pose.

Gary Bickett, an environmentalist with the southwest Washington public health district in Vancouver, said different methods of making the stuff produce different leftovers. Exposure to chemicals such as phenylacetic acid and formaldehyde can irritate nasal passages. Exposure to others, such as benzylchloride and lead acetate, can cause cancer.

Chemist Doubts Risk

Don Matteson, a Washington State University organic chemistry professor, called the concerns about risk exaggerated and said the chemicals, if handled properly, will not harm anyone.

“I would not be afraid to go to the site and play around with it,” he said. “It isn’t going to bother me. All those chemicals are biodegradable. The kind of breakdown you get from that stuff, it’s very closely related to the decay of wood.”

Matteson smirks at the mention of cleanup crews in protective suits. Those workers, he says, stand a greater chance of “heat exhaustion from putting that equipment on” than of being harmed by exposure to a meth lab site.

That’s of little reassurance to Newman, who is resigned to the fact that her property probably won’t ever be the moneymaker she once envisioned. Once it passes environmental tests, it will be up for sale.

“I was just going to enjoy my life and have a good time,” Newman said. “I’m mad as hell!”