PORTERVILLE, Calif. (AP) — National forests and parks — long popular with Mexican marijuana-growing cartels — have become home to some of the most polluted pockets of wilderness in America because of the toxic chemicals needed to eke lucrative harvests from rocky mountainsides, federal officials said. The grow sites have taken hold from the West Coast’s Cascade Mountains, as well as on federal lands in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia. Seven hundred grow sites were discovered on U.S. Forest Service land in California. —-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected]
Mexican marijuana cartels sulley US forests
By The Associated Press
October 11, 2008