Welcome To Meth Country - clandestine methamphetamine labs

Sierra, Jan, 2001 by Marilyn Berlin Snell

Born and raised on a ranch, Agent Thorn still works cattle on 11,000 acres near the lab site. He notes that downstream from the site, on a ranch adjoining the property, 20 head of cattle turned up dead. "As a rancher, I found that highly unusual," says Thorn. "These guys were filtering their chemicals and then dumping the toxic residue right into the drainage." Autopsies on the cows found high levels of toxicity but the results were inconclusive. The report said the cattle had extensive kidney and liver damage, but that this was consistent with damage caused by jimson weed as well as some of the chemicals found at the site. "But you've got to wonder," Thorn adds. "Jimson only grows in the spring and these cows all died at once, in September."

Across the state from Apache County, near the California border, lies the desert outpost of Kingman, Arizona. The town made headlines in 1995 when it was discovered that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had been living there right before his fateful road trip to the heartland. This vast and desolate region in western Arizona is also meth country. In fact, McVeigh's lawyer made an argument during the trial that his client was a practicing, paranoid, delusional "tweaker," or meth addict, whose judgment had been irreparably impaired by his drug use. Mohave County law enforcement officers don't like to be reminded of their infamous former resident, but they're more than willing to confirm that they have a serious meth-lab problem. The county's percentage of meth labs per capita has earned it a High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area designation from the federal government.

In 1998, a super lab using the "Nazi" cooking method was found near Kingman. Named for the process used to make meth during World War II in Germany to energize Wehrmacht troops, the recipe was taped to the lab wall when officers and a hazmat team from Phoenix arrived. "In this county there's no industry besides prisons and agriculture," says Mohave County DEA agent Jeff Sandberg. "But there are a lot of remote areas that make a great place to do meth business." According to both state and federal narcotics agents in Mohave County, meth labs are their biggest problem.

Last February, Mohave County law enforcement raided a super lab in a scrub-brush-and-chaparral rural subdivision 18 miles east of Kingman. Emmett Sturgill, the Narcotics Unit supervisor for the Arizona Department of Public Safety in Kingman, says that as cattle grazing operations go under, the land is being subdivided and sold dirt-cheap. "For $250 down you can buy a 40-acre parcel, so all these low-life jerks who don't have much money grab these deals, go out there and put a camper down, and start cooking meth." The lab, on Cedar Ridge Road, was in full swing when officers converged on the trailer. It took three days and more than $100,000 to clean up the contaminated soil, destroy the buildings, and cart off the toxic chemicals. "We didn't find much waste in containers at the site," says Detective Ernie Severson, who was in charge of the Cedar Ridge raid and cleanup. "But there are miles and miles of desert where they probably dumped it."