Authorities makes huge marijuana bust in Buckingham
The Buckingham Sheriff’s Department has put a serious dent in a new county cash crop — marijuana.
Sheriff William G. Kidd Jr. announced Thursday that his department and the Virginia State Police had confiscated 6,258 marijuana plants, valued at $21.9 million, in raids of three sites on Wednesday afternoon.
Almost all of the plants were found in one 2-acre site between Dillwyn and Arvonia in the northeastern part of the county in what the department described as “a secluded, elaborate ‘grow’ operation.”
Kidd said in an interview that law-enforcement officers spotted the main plot initially from the air and then found additional plots as part of the ground investigation.
The marijuana was cultivated with buried hoses in densely planted plots, he said. “They planted the stuff on top of each other.”
The other two sites included a small number of plants, the sheriff said.
The department has not yet made any arrests but said the investigation is ongoing and now includes the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.
The Buckingham investigation is part of the Governor’s Initiative Against Narcotics Trafficking. The program is an annual effort to target the cultivation and harvesting of marijuana and is a cooperative effort among the state police, the Virginia National Guard, and local law-enforcement agencies.
“It’s going on statewide right now,” said state police spokeswoman Corinne Geller.
