Agents Raid Large Illegal Pot Grows Near Ephrata

As many as eight people are behind bars after police raided two illegal marijuana grow sites in Grant County last last week.

The busts happened Thursday (Aug. 1) when about 40 law enforcement officers served search warrants on the two connected sites near Road C Northeast and Road 11 Northeast just south of Ephrata.

Grant County Sheriff's Office spokesperson, Kyle Foreman, says the operation was large and well-established.

"Both sites had irrigation, storage for agricultural chemicals, and workers who lived on the property. One site alone had a covered growing area about the size of a football field."

Foreman says the sites were part of a large and organized illegal drug enterprise, and that the importance of shutting them down to the community can't be underscored enough.

"Illegal drug operations are dangerous and violent. Last year, two people were shot at one of the two Ephrata grow sites that agents raided last Thursday. And illegally-disposed chemicals and other wastes from grow sites can often end up in city and county sewer systems and dumped along roadsides."

After making numerous arrests at the Ephrata sites, investigators then apprehended the suspected ringleader of the illegal operation, 38-year-old Francisco Solorio Valencia, in Yakima, where they also seized more than 400 pounds of packaged marijuana with a street value of roughly $400,000.

Solorio-Valencia is currently lodged in the Grant County Jail on suspicion of leading organized crime and manufacturing marijuana.