Sheriff says Siskiyou County is overwhelmed with Illegal marijuana grows

Near Montague, CA.–  Neighbors who live down the 1200 block of York Road near Montague are relieved that sticks are all that’s left of an illegal marijuana grow. “We don’t want marijuana grows down the street. So that was a concern of ours.”

Siskiyou County Sheriff John Lopey said,”People are growing more on private property. A lot of our land is fairly inexpensive comparatively speaking to other counties and states.”
Lopey said he’s overwhelmed with the increase in illegal marijuana grows.Thursday 21 people were arrested, all from out of the area and of Asian-American descent involved in the grow on York Road that had close to 400 plants and 1500 pounds of pot worth millions.

“That was a distribution center. Virtually there was several buildings that had marijuana plants hanging.”

An aerial photo given to us by the sheriff’s department shows the marijuana plants, the buildings and the cars. The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Department said they had to rip each and every plant out with chainsaws and uproot them and that it took two dump trucks and an extra trailer to do all of that.

Lopey said this year alone they’ve investigated 100 pot grows and most of them have violated the county’s growing ordinance and state law.

“I’m very concerned. Look at this preliminary count of over 1500 pounds of pot. Where is that marijuana going? Some of it may go to the county but most of it is going outside the county into communities.”

And said he won’t stand for this type of criminal activity in his county.
“Are we overwhelmed? Yes. Are we goign to get to every grow site,? Probably not. But we are going to do out best to enforce our ordinance and criminal provisions of law.”

Lopey said most of the 21 people arrested have been cited to appear in court and released from jail.

© 2024 KOBI-TV NBC5. All rights reserved unless otherwise stated.

Skip to content