Clay County authorities announced today they had broken up a marijuana grow-house operation spread out among four houses in the residential areas of Candlewood Court, Valor Court, Fireweed Court and Guava Court.
According to the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, the marijuana bust resulted in 5 arrests and the confiscation of more than 200 pot plants with a street value estimated at $864,000.
Clay County Sheriff Rick Beseler says this wasn’t your run of the mill grow-house operation, however.
What made it so unusual, he says, were the tractor-trailer cargo containers that had been converted into greenhouses and buried 20 feet below ground behind one of the houses.
"These individuals actually climbed up a telephone pole, and manually tapped into a 15,000 volt electric line, running that underground to their bunker to run air conditioning and lighting systems."
Beseler says the grow-house operation was discovered during a routine traffic stop when a state trooper in Miami noticed some unusual equipment in a car that had a Clay County license plate and called federal drug authorities.
The investigation into the grow house operation, Beseler says, is on-going.
