UT- Iron County sheriff: Pot farms linked to Mexican drug cartels

By bob mims

The Salt Lake Tribune
First published Jul 29 2011 09:46AM
Updated Jul 29, 2011 11:21PM

Somewhere in an Iron County landfill, buried deep under mountains of malodorous refuse, a veritable forest of marijuana was beginning to rot on Friday.

In all, a multi-agency law enforcement task force led by the Iron County Sheriff’s Office seized 15,692 plants during raids Thursday on two remote pot farms about 15 miles northeast of Cedar City.

The winners: up to 80 officers representing not only the office of Carbon County Sheriff Mark Gower, but also the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Bureau of Land Management; Beaver, Garfield and Kane counties; the Utah Department of Public Safety (DPS); and Cedar City.

The losers, according to Gower: Mexican drug cartels that set up such operations in southern Utah’s sparsely populated high deserts.

Gower said the raids began about dawn Thursday on two “marijuana gardensâ€