News and event information for Williams Lake, BC - as it happens.

On July 31 Lillooet RCMP officers travelled by boat to Carpenter Lake, approximately one hour outside of Lillooet along Route 40, to a place they had been monitoring since last year after noticing suspicious activities on the lake. Officers patrolled the north side of the lake and discovered approximately 10,000 marijuana plants at this location.

Further patrols on the south shore of the lake the next day located another grow location along the shoreline with approximately 6,000 plants.

Officers also found sophisticated watering systems with pumps, gravity fed water lines and miles of hoses feeding water to the plants. When they followed the water lines they located two other spots with several thousand plants. During the two days a total of 23,000 marijuana plants ranging is size between three and five feet tall were located and destroyed. The plants were mature and would have likely been harvested within then next few weeks.  The street value of this marijuana once processed would have been in the millions. The volume of plants and the level of sophistication suggests that they had been growing in this area, on crown land, for quite some time.

No one was present at the sites when the RCMP members attended. No arrests have been made in relation to this grow operation, however the Lillooet RCMP detachment is still investigating.

“Drug abuse of any kind is a serious health and social problem. The goal of the RCMP is to prevent drug-related harm by reducing the supply and demand for illicit drugs," stated Sergeant Fran Bethell of the Lillooet detachment. "The drug problem is one of global proportions and we know that some of the marijuana we harvested would have ended up in the hands of young people.”

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