DWP ‘Marijuana Farmers’ Enter No-Contest Pleas : Crime: The two, charged with building a farm under the Playa del Rey station, face up to one year in jail.

Two former Department of Water and Power workers pleaded no contest Thursday to conspiracy charges for building a secret underground marijuana farm beneath a Playa del Rey generating station.

Boyd L. Duffin Jr., 38, and Richard V. Viduka, 32, entered their pleas in Los Angeles Superior Court in return for an agreement that they will not face more than a year in County Jail when they are sentenced March 3.

Charges of grand theft against the two men--filed because they are accused of using DWP materials, time and workers to complete the underground chambers--will be set aside after they are sentenced, Deputy Dist. Atty. Scott Gordon said.

State law would not have allowed them to be sentenced on both the conspiracy and the theft charges, Gordon said.

“They did not have any criminal record, so that was taken into consideration” in making the plea agreement, Gordon said. In addition, he said, the men will be ordered to pay the DWP $31,000, the agency’s estimate of what it cost to build the rooms.

Both men were fired from their DWP jobs in May, about two months after the two underground rooms were found.

Duffin, a construction supervisor for more than six years, said in an earlier interview that he did not know about the underground chambers until investigators approached him about them last year.

On Thursday, his attorney, Thomas R. White, said Duffin has not told him what his involvement was. “He just indicated he wanted this all over and done with.”

The attorney for Viduka, a “daily rate” carpenter who worked for the DWP about four years, could not be reached for comment Thursday.

Investigators believe Duffin and Viduka joined forces about two years ago to build the two 10-by-40-foot underground rooms beneath a concrete construction slab in the southeast corner of the 40-acre Scattergood steam plant.

Duffin was accused of using DWP materials and arranging for a work order to have a backhoe operator dig the eight-foot-high chambers underneath the slab, which holds three gravel bins.

The rooms remained a secret until last March, when officials acting on an anonymous tip found a hidden trapdoor inside a toolshed.

Although no marijuana plants were present when officials found the site, soil tests disclosed that marijuana had been grown there at some point.

Both of the chambers had numerous electrical outlets installed near the ceilings, fresh water outlets and a ventilation system, as well as plastic-lined sumps dug in a corner for collecting excess water. Inside the rooms were a small pump and hose, 200 feet of polyethylene irrigation hose and nitric acid, which is used as a base for fertilizers.

“We figured out the use by inference,” Gordon said. “It is all pretty amazing.”