At about 8:30 a.m. on 6 August 2024, the Kern County Sheriff’s Office, its High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area task force, California Department of Fish and Wildlife wardens, the state’s illicit-cannabis eradication task force and county probation officers served a search warrant on an underground cannabis grow discovered in the desert north of Boron.[1][2][3] Two suspects tried to flee the buried operation and were quickly caught.[1][2]
The grow consisted of numerous buried shipping containers fitted with sophisticated electrical, ventilation and cooling systems running off a large diesel-powered commercial generator.[1][2] Officers eradicated 17,650 cannabis plants from the underground rooms and seized about 1,069 pounds (about 485 kilogrammes) of processed cannabis.[2][3]
Three men found running the grow, Qingxue Zhang, 57, Siyun Cao, 32, and Xiyyu Zou, 53, all described as from China, were arrested and booked into the Lerdo Justice Facility on suspicion of maintaining a place for drug sales, cultivating cannabis, possessing cannabis for sale, resisting arrest, environmental offences tied to the cultivation and conspiracy.[1][2] County code officers found numerous violations and major safety hazards at the site and declared the structures, outbuildings and buried containers unsafe for occupancy.[1][2]
