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Sheriff's Wipe Out Pot Farm in Montecito Hills
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More Pot Farms Raided in Local Mountains

KEYT Assignment Desk

Story Created: Jul 28, 2010 at 3:20 PM PDT

Story Updated: Jul 30, 2010 at 3:10 PM PDT

Montecito - It appears some pot farmers thought they could grow fields of marijuana in the Montecito foothills and not get spotted. They thought wrong.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department found those pot fields and raided them Wednesday morning. No arrests were made.

The large pot farms were found in three gardens in Romero Canyon, one in Romero Saddle and one on Montecito Peak. Some were very
close to populated areas, multi-million-dollar mansions and well traveled hiking trails.

That's where KEY News saw a raid going down on Wednesday.

The sound of Sheriff's helicopters broke the peaceful nature of the Romero Trail after a major marijuana grow was spotted.

The pot was spotted quite a ways back, over several ridges.

It was a hike that was estimated to be well over an hour into the hills.

Most of the people using this area, look like they are heading into the great outdoors, but recently one hiker saw some people he said, just didn't fit in.

John Voorhis says..."I saw at that some people sitting at that corner six weeks ago and they didn't look like hikers or mountain bikers so it stuck in my mind...I'm not surprised".

One hiker from Florida was quite surprised when he heard this area had criminals up in the hills.

The Sheriff's Department says their week-long eradication campaign that started last Thursday has netted a total of 58-thousand plants with a street value of $116,000,000.
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