Marijuana Growers Pour Into San Diego County : Crime: Crackdown in Northern California pushed them south. Now there is a bumper pot crop in the remote backcountry.

It’s harvest time and a bumper crop of marijuana is growing in the Southern California backcountry, authorities say.

From remote canyons in national forests to irrigated citrus groves, growers have planted the highly profitable cannabis. The reasons, according to law enforcement officials, are last spring’s heavy rainfall and beefed-up police surveillance that has pushed growers out of Northern California.

“Our guys were doing such a good job in spotting and eradicating cannabis that it was beginning to take a dramatic shift to San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange and Los Angeles counties,” said Charles Stowell, coordinator of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s statewide marijuana eradication program.

“The growers move,” he said. “They are a rather fluid group.”

So far this year, narcotics agents have seized 108,158 marijuana plants statewide, up from the same time period last year.

It’s a high-stakes gamble in which the payoff can be considerable: 300 full-grown plants will net more than $1 million. One pound of marijuana--which one mature plant usually produces--fetches about $3,400 wholesale.

In the Cleveland National Forest in San Diego County, growers take advantage of the steep, remote canyons where few hikers and hunters venture.

To avoid detection by helicopters, they’ve begun to space their plants farther apart, making the distinctive leaf all but impossible to detect from the air. Rather than plant one large plantation, growers now plant a string of smaller ones, authorities said.

They choose areas accessible only by foot, miles from hiking trails, and usually only reachable by the very determined.

One man--U.S. Forest Service special agent Daniel G. Gustafson--is charged with monitoring 150,000 acres of the national forest. Gustafson knows most of the growers’ tricks, which doesn’t mean they don’t work. He knows to look for hollowed-out manzanitas or red shank bushes that give shelter to marijuana seedlings and yet provide a green umbrella that--from the air--blocks any sign of the telltale leaf.

With such a large territory, Gustafson counts on narcotic agents in helicopters, informants, disgruntled former partners of growers, hunters and his own two feet to ferret out marijuana garden locations. Knowing that the growers need water, Gustafson will frequently hike through dense, remote areas that have access to water, like those along canyon drains.

Some areas are so steep that a horse can not handle it and so dense with brush that walking only 100 yards can take two hours.

“I wouldn’t take my worst enemies to some plants; it’s so remote,” said Gustafson, shaking his head. “It’s sort of like hunting or fishing--sometimes you catch something, sometimes you don’t.”

Indeed, water is the key.

Some growers rig up elaborate drip-irrigation systems with timers that trickle just the right amount on each plant. One man used two water beds (with each one holding more than 100 gallons) to store water.

Another tapped the U.S. Forest Service’s own water lines. Still another dammed up a creek. Others, however, plant beside little-used dirt roads and dump water on the plants as they drive by at night.

Sometimes marijuana growers take advantage of citrus and avocado groves in North County, tapping irrigation water and hiding their illegal crop among the trees.

Last week, for instance, 3,017 marijuana plants were snatched from three different sites nestled among citrus groves in the De Luz Canyon and Fallbrook area, said Lt. Pat Kerins of the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and division commander of the county’s Narcotics Task Force, an interagency group.

Because this year has been the wettest of the last six, marijuana growers don’t need to rely as much on tapping the water lines of their legitimate counterparts. And these days, many farmers have wised up.

Though they may not notice the marijuana plants, farmers can usually spot a surge in their water use--a red flag that someone may be tapping their lines.

According to authorities, growers in Southern California have perfected their trade. The better growers usually discard the male plants, gunning for a high-grade sensemilla plant. Various strains are crossbred for their potency. The end product is about three to five times stronger than it was during the ‘60s when marijuana smoking became popular.

“It’s the best dope in the world,” Stowell said.

And while interest in cocaine and hard drugs has waned, many Californians are eager to buy marijuana.

“They don’t have to export the marijuana; they can market it right here. In Southern California, we’ve got the demand here, there is always someone to sell to,” Gustafson said. “Are we winning or are they? Good question.”

Aside from shielding their crop from authorities, growers have other hurdles to overcome before they have a successful harvest.

They must guard against “patch pirates,” raiders who steal a mature crop. To help better their odds, those tending the plants often tote guns and sometimes set booby traps. In San Diego County, 10 such potentially deadly traps were discovered last year by law enforcement agents, said Jack Hook, a Drug Enforcement Administration special agent in San Diego.

These traps range from Vietnam War-era devices in which the hapless walker tumbles into a pit to a more diabolical setup with shotgun shells hooked to rat traps that are triggered by trip wires.

“Marijuana is a big, lucrative business,” sighed Hook.

Growers must also guard against four-footed foes: deer that can strip the plants to a bald bunch of stalks; rats, gophers, and rabbits that chew the stalks, causing the plants to topple and die.

The bosses of a marijuana operation usually don’t cultivate the drug on their own land and, in fact, some don’t come anywhere near the growing plants, according to authorities. More and more marijuana growers use undocumented workers, who never learn the identity of their boss and become pawns in what has become big-money business, law enforcement officials say.

Growers usually do not use their own private land because authorities will confiscate the property if marijuana is found growing on it.

While growers have become more sophisticated, narcotics agents are struggling to keep pace.

This year, authorities charged with eradicating marijuana have changed their mission: No longer do they just “wack-and-stack,” the phrase that agents use to describe pulling up the leafy 12-foot plants.

“Now, we are concentrating on putting more people in jail,” said Hook.

Statewide, law enforcement agencies have arrested 780 marijuana growers and eradicated 108,158 marijuana plants so far this year, 9% more plants than the same time period last year. In San Diego, authorities have snagged 14,941 plants so far--a number they expect will surpass last year’s catch of 18,026--and have arrested 34 people in connection with growing them, Hook said.

While the number of arrests and seizures has increased steadily over the years, Stowell estimates that authorities are barely keeping up, snaring perhaps 10% of the marijuana grown in California.

Said the Forest Service’s Gustafson: “We win some and they win some and they seem to win a bit more than us.”

Authorities also say cultivation of marijuana grown indoors is on the increase in San Diego County.

Last year, San Diego officials snagged 364 marijuana plants grown inside under plant lights, a practice that agents dub “indoor grows.” So far this year, of the 14,941 plants snared, 2,410 were indoor grows.

In June, narcotics agents chalked up a major haul when they raided an indoor operation in a Golden Hill air-conditioned warehouse, where more than 2,200 seedlings were being carefully tended under lights. Investigators believe the sophisticated setup--with fertilizer lines running to each plant and controls for carbon dioxide--had been in use for at least the last two years.

Had the fledgling plants been mature enough to harvest, the seizure would have been worth about $8 million, Kerins said.

“People are going to more indoor grows because it’s easier to hide,” Hook said. “It’s a booming business here in the county.”

Seizure of Marijuana

The value of assets seized by drug enforcement officials from marijuana growers has nearly tripled in San Diego County and doubled statewide from a year earlier.

SAN DIEGO COUNTY

1990 1991 1992* Total plants seized 9,000 18,026 14,941 Plants grown indoors N/A 364 2,410 Arrests 4 41 34 Assets seized** N/A $16,000 $46,000

STATEWIDE

1991 1992* Total plants seized 151,479 108,158 Plants grown indoors 45,562 39,922 Arrests 517 780 Assets seized** $1+ million $2+ million

* Statistics are incomplete for this year. Officials say they expect the 1992 numbers to exceed the previous year.

** Assets include cash, equipment and cars.

Source: Drug Enforcement Administration