©1997 San Francisco Chronicle

Meth Labs' Legacy of Poison State's No. 2 hazardous waste problem

Glen Martin, Ramon G. McLeod, Chronicle Staff Writers

CALIFORNIA

In a handful of decrepit chicken coops on the San Mateo County coast, a
clandestine lab churned out about $10 million worth of methamphetamine
before authorities busted it recently.

The raid went off without a hitch, but that's when the real work began.

Shrouded in protective gear to fend off toxic fumes and liquids,
technicians began the painstaking and dangerous cleanup of the gunk that
the drugmakers left behind.

As the illicit production of methamphetamine also known as crank, speed,
crystal or meth booms throughout the state, Californians are
increasingly at risk of exposure to waste products resulting from the
drug's manufacture. Two of the top five counties for meth production are
Contra Costa and Sacramento.

According to a Chronicle analysis of state reports, cleaning up meth lab
wastes is now the No. 2 job for California's hazardous materials response
teams, second only to fuel and other petroleum product spills.

The cleanup work does not come cheap. And unlike industrial spills

where the offending corporation can be charged for the work the
taxpayers are left holding the bill.

Fumes from meth labs can kill directly or explode into fatal fires. And the
main byproduct from the distillation process a toxic, red sludge is
routinely dumped in orchards, back yards and rivers, or flushed down drains.

``It's a terrible problem,'' said Ed Machado, a special agent supervisor
with the California Bureau of Narcotics. ``The production of one pound of
meth results in about seven pounds of waste products. And the cookers show
no concern whatsoever about their disposal. People living or walking
anywhere near an illicit site are at risk.''

Once the province of white biker gangs, the main players in the meth trade
these days are crews of Mexican nationals who are brought to the United
States by Mexican narcotics gangs for the express purpose of cooking meth.
They are bankrolled by Mexican drug cartels that also transport large
quantities of cocaine and marijuana to this country.

HUGE DEMAND FOR METH

The allure of the drug for outlaw entrepreneurs is easy to understand
profits are high. The demand is huge for meth, which is sometimes known as
``poor man's cocaine.'' A couple of lines of cocaine or a puff on the crack
pipe will yield a high that lasts 30 minutes at most. A comparable quantity
of crank, however, will keep a user wired for hours.

And unlike cocaine, which must be refined from a shrub that grows only in
the Andes, methamphetamine can be produced by anyone with a crude
``recipe,'' using basic laboratory apparatus and easily procured yet
dangerous chemicals.

With a $2,000 investment, a ``cooker'' can easily realize a profit of
$40,000 taxfree dollars from a single pound of crank.

The production process begins with distillation of ``precursors.'' The most
common precursors in use are ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, ingredients in
certain overthecounter medicines, such as allergy remedies. These
medications are illegally obtained in quantity by cooking crews.

A federal law was implemented last week that imposes tougher conditions on
manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers of these drugs. Law enforcement
officials are reluctant to guess whether the new statute will make it
harder for cooking crews to obtain the medications.

Cookers treat the ephedrine and pseudoephedrine with highly dangerous
chemicals that include red phosphorous, hydrogen chloride, hydriodic acid,
sodium hydroxide and solvents such as acetone, ethyl ether and freon.

After this mixture is subjected to heat and several refining techniques,
the methamphetamine crystals are extracted. The substance left behind is a
virtual witches' brew of caustic and carcinogenic chemicals, including
various acids, phosphine gas, solvent and amphetamine fractions, benzene,
chloroform and thionyl chloride.

Many labs produce hundreds of pounds of crank before they are dismantled
or busted said special agent Machado, which results in tons of illegally
disposed toxic waste.

MILLIONS SPENT ON CLEANUP

The state now spends $6.8 million annually just on meth lab
decontamination, and the figure is expected to climb. The U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency has added $1 million to its budget just to
figure out how to clean up buildings that have housed meth labs.

The aftermath of meth production can sometimes threaten entire towns.

Two years ago, a meth lab brought about the shutdown of the water supply
for the small San Diego County town of Boulevard.

Nick Vent, a hazardous materials specialist for the San Diego County
Department of Environmental Health, said the owner of a small motel
discovered a guest cooking meth in one of the rooms. The owner told the
guest to leave, or face a visit from the police. The cooker fled, but
abandoned his equipment and chemicals.

``The owner decided to get rid of it on his own,'' said Vent. ``God knows
what he was thinking, but he dumped it down a well that was part of the
town water system. We spent two days pumping that well, and the 50 people
who live there spent the next two weeks on bottled water. It was quite a
mess.''

Sometimes, the labs can be spectacularly deadly. In the Southern California
town of Carson recently, three men set up shop in a squalid motel room. One
disconnected a hose, and the trio died almost instantly, their lungs seared
and shriveled by phosphine gas.

``If the manager who found the bodies had come to the room a few hours
earlier, he would have died, too,'' said Tom Holman, the Los Angeles County
Sheriff's Department narcotics detective who handled the case. ``These guys
aren't chemists they really don't know how dangerous the compounds are
that they're messing with.''

No one knows how many meth labs are operating in California. Narcotics
agents say the more staff they dedicate to the problem, the more labs they
find. By all accounts, production is steadily expanding. During the state's
199596 fiscal year, 965 labs were busted. That figure grew to 1,565 labs
in the 199697 fiscal year, according to the California EPA.

DECEPTIVE NUMBERS

But even those numbers are deceptive. Because so many different law
enforcement agencies, health departments and environmental agencies are
independently monitoring the illicit trade, most statistics are incomplete.

1GRAFS ADDED

Hardly a week goes by without a major drug lab bust in California. Last
week, two major Northern California labs were discovered one in a Santa
Rosa storage rental unit and another in a barn in Monterey County. A
combined 200 pounds of crank was seized in the raids.

Once found primarily in the countryside, meth labs are now everywhere,
making their toxic hazards even more worrisome.

``The myth is that this is just a rural problem,'' said Karl Palmer, the
chief of emergency response for the California EPA.

``Actually, about 70 percent of the labs are in urban areas.''

The labs are found in every conceivable place, said Palmer ``hotels,
motels, storage units, cars, Winnebagos, boats. No airplanes yet, but I
guess we'll find (a lab) in one sometime.''

About 70 percent of the labs are found in Southern California, but Northern
California also has plenty. Two of the top five counties for meth
production are in the north Contra Costa and Sacramento. The other
counties are Riverside, Los Angeles and San Diego.

No matter where the labs are, they always leave law enforcement and
environmental officials with a huge mess.

``Sometimes the levels of contamination are almost unbelievable,'' said
state agent Machado. ``I remember this one meth operation in a Ventura
County orchard. There was a literal stream of red gunk flowing between the
trees from all the waste dumping. All the leaves were turning brown.''

BURNING, BLINDING FUMES

Cleanups are risky for the participants. Technicians must seal themselves
in respirators, impermeable jump suits, rubber gloves and rubber boots.

``The byproducts typically are dumped in a pit in the back yard,'' said
Palmer. ``They're incredibly dangerous. If you breathe the fumes you'll
burn your lungs, and if you get them in your eyes you can be blinded. The
chemical salts can give you seizures. (Phosphorous and solvents) are very
unstable and can explode.''

The methodology for dealing with lab sites is now essentially standardized,
said Palmer.

``(State environmental agents) do a removal as opposed to a remedial
action,'' he said. ``We do the best we can to remove immediate, acute
threats, and then we hand it over to the local health people. It's up to
them to decide if a place can be rehabilitated so people can live in it
again.''

EPA HANDLES BIGGEST JOBS

The largest and most contaminated sites those requiring more than
$25,000 to clean up are handed off to the U.S. EPA, which uses Superfund
money for the work.

``If (the cookers) are dumping, we'll do whatever it takes, including going
in with backhoes to dig up the dirt and haul it out of there,'' said Tom
Brubaker, chief of emergency response for the

U.S. EPA.

That, however, is the easy and cheap part. The biggest problem is
decontaminating a building, said Brubaker.

``We haven't really dealt with it because they (usually) don't involve
releases into the environment,'' said Brubaker. ``Interior decontamination
is very, very expensive. (On average) it costs $3,100 to clean up a meth
lab. But if you're going to rehabilitate a residence, rip out rugs and tear
up Sheetrock, the costs can go up by a factor of 10. Local government can't
afford that, and neither can we.''

LAB COULD BE YOUR NEIGHBOR

Perhaps the most insidious thing about methamphetamine waste contamination
is the chilling fact that the labs can be found anywhere: in apartment
complexes, in picturesque barns, in the homes of nextdoor neighbors, in
buildings adjacent to schools and playgrounds.

That was readily apparent at the San Mateo County raid two weeks ago. Near
the hamlet of Pescadero, state agents descended on a small farmhouse and
several adjacent outbuildings. Among the items seized were eight glass
``reaction vessels'' used to catalyze methamphetamine from ephedrine, large
stocks of chemicals, propane gas, heating elements, and 20 gallons of
ephedrine solution that would ultimately have yielded between 60 and 100
pounds of refined, powdered meth.

No arrests were made the cookers had fled, said Bureau of Narcotics
special agent supervisor Richard Camps. He said the crews had been cooking
meth for at least six months in a warren of filthy chicken coops adjacent
to the farm house. Camps estimated that at least 600 pounds of crank had
been produced there, representing a street value of about $10 million.

Waste products had been dumped in a large, unlined pit excavated in a
nearby corn patch. Four days after the bust, the pit was still onethird
full with viscous, red slime. Chemical containers bobbed in the muck.

The sludge was leeching directly into the sandy soil.

``What a mess,'' Camps said. ``And the worst thing about it is that it's so
common. We see things like this all the time this isn't even a
particularly big operation. Multiply this by a few hundred active labs,
operating day and night, and you begin to get a vague idea of the problem.''