By Pepper Fisher

PORT ANGELES – The Clallam County Sheriff’s Office, like many law enforcement jurisdictions nationwide, has had to deal with a problem that many of us didn’t know existed; how to properly dispose of large amounts of marijuana plants and buds seized from illegal grow operations.

The answer, they recently discovered, was right here in their own back yard. As part a new arrangement with the McKinley Paper Mill in Port Angeles, authorities last week destroyed over 100 pounds of pot in the mill’s incinerator.

According to the Sheriff’s Chief Criminal Deputy Brian King, marijuana plants are difficult to store as evidence because they decompose and create odor and mold problems. He says they recently began a practice of obtaining court orders for destruction of marijuana plants. A recent bust of a grow operation in a warehouse on Hulse Road yielded almost 60 pounds of bud and 146 full-grown plants, but state regulations don’t allow for just tossing them into a bonfire. Incinerating them lawfully would have required sending two Sheriff’s employees all the way to Spokane.

That was until King heard about an incinerator at the McKinley Mill that met and even exceeded what the waste facility in Spokane is doing. He had his evidence managers reach out to mill officials and they were more than happy to help out.

King says the new arrangement saved the taxpayers the cost of sending two employees to Spokane, and he hopes to make this their new practice when it comes to organic waste like marijuana. Other drugs, such as those collected during the drug takeback program, will still have to be destroyed during their annual trip to Spokane.

We reached out to the mill’s Human Resource Manager Peter Johnson for a comment. He replied simply, “This is the Sheriff’s program and so we will let him speak on it. We seek only to be a good corporate citizen.”

(CCSO photos of seized marijuana and McKinley Mill incinerator)