Lit_Match

An invasion of privacy
05-26-07|BCNG|By Monisha Martins

Pacing around his living room Wednesday, Richard Pitt can't believe the city's safety inspection team is late.

He points to an inspection notice delivered to his home on 119 B Avenue in Pitt Meadows.

The team was to arrive at 10:30 a.m. It is 45 minutes late.

When two police cars, a fire department pick-up and bylaws truck pulled up in front of the house to check for an illegal marijuana grow operation, Pitt was ready.

"It's an invasion of privacy," he said.

"It has taken two hours out of my day."

Pitt's home was flagged as a potential public safety hazard by the City of Pitt Meadows this week because of its high electricity consumption.

A computer specialist who started Canada's first commercial Internet Service Provider – Wimsey – he now dedicates his time to birds, mainly bald eagles and video camera feeds of their nests.

Last month's bill from B.C. Hydro showed that Pitt used 3,100 kilowatt hours of electricity. The month before he clocked 3,700 kWh after installing cameras in Esquimalt to spy on an osprey nest.

He's had a business licence from the City of Pitt Meadows for 14 years. He has about 10 computers in his home, with accompanying hard drives, monitors, servers and wires.

"They are comparing me to a typical suburbanite not someone whose business is computers," Pitt said.

He received a 24-hour notice of inspection from the city on Tuesday.

He asked the police officer and bylaw official to come inside that day and see the computers for themselves. They refused.

On Wednesday, the Pitt Meadows safety inspection team searched his home.

Pitt, his wife Shirley, a visitor and his son were told to wait outside while three armed police officers, a bylaw enforcement officer, an assistant fire chief and a building inspector checked for the unusual spike in electricity and for the tell-tale signs of a pot growing operation – faulty wiring and building code violations.

If the Pitts refused to let the team inside, they were warned B.C. Hydro could cut off their power.

"I was just not given an option," Pitt said.

No marijuana or deficiencies were found at Pitt's home.

But, Pitt said on blog.pacdat.net, the lights went out around Pitt Meadows an hour after the inspectors left.

According to a study released by the University College of the Fraser Valley in 2004, Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows are one of the fastest growing areas in B.C. for marijuana cultivation.

The report showed that the number of marijuana cases in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows since 1997 had risen 375 per cent, including 152 cases in 2003 – representing 3.4 per cent of all those in B.C. that year.

To stem the lucrative illegal trade, the City of Pitt Meadows began a pilot project to target marijuana grow operations through safety inspections six months ago.

Under the province's Safety Standards Amendment Act, which came into effect last June, B.C. Hydro can share domestic electrical consumption information with municipal safety authorities.

A residence has abnormal consumption if it uses more than 93 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per day, or three-times the average. An average home uses 31 kWh a day.

Once the information is received, Pitt Meadows staff research the house, looking for inexplicable spikes in electricity and water use.

If the information gleaned points to a possible grow-op, a 24-hour notice of inspection is posted on the house.

RCMP officers accompany the team on all inspections and clear the house if a grow-op is found.

A no-occupancy notice is posted at the house if an electrical bypass, mould or furnace modifications are found. Homeowners bear the cost of the inspection which can total more than $3,000.

Leslie Elchuk, Pitt Meadows bylaw enforcement officer said Wednesday's search was to ensure public safety.

"We received data from B.C. Hydro that there was excessive hydro consumed at that house," she explained.

"We do a thorough work-up of every single property before we knock on the door and ask for an inspection."

Before an inspection, Elchuk researches the square footage of the home, what it looks like and if it has a business licence.

In Pitt's case, his licence was for a "business office," Elchuk said.

The inspection team also drives by the house and snaps photographs.

All the vehicles parked on the property are run through a database by police.

The City of Pitt Meadows has inspected 34 houses since it started the pilot project.

Of those, "deficiencies" like faulty wiring, plumbing and building alterations were found in 25.

Evidence of a marijuana grow operation was found in just one of the properties, Elchuk added.

"If there was something happening there and it's gone and things are all in place that's what we want," she said.

"It is really, really good. It is making a difference. We have a safer community."

In the same six month period, RCMP busted......???? marijuana grow operations in Pitt Meadows.

A report on the pilot safety inspection project to Pitt Meadows council is expected by June.

Elchuk said it will be up to council to decide if the safety inspection become a permanent bylaw tool.

Targeting marijuana grow ops through safety inspections was pioneered by the City of Surrey.

A 90-day pilot project in 2005 "rendered safe" and temporarily disrupted 118 marijuana grow operations in Surrey.

In that same 90-day period, the Surrey RCMP detachment took down a total of 75 grow operations.

According to the Surrey fire department, a house with a grow op is 24 times more likely than one without to go up in smoke.

Following Surrey's success, similar bylaws have sprung in Port Coquitlam, Coquitlam and Abbotsford.

The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, opposes such bylaws and the legislative scheme that brought in the partnership with B.C. Hydro.

"You shouldn't be doing through the back door what you can't do through the front door," said Micheal Vonn, policy director for the civil liberties association.

"This is clearly a means of circumventing the proper warrant procedure."

Instead of using safety inspections as a ruse to enter a home, Vonn suggests bylaw officials should telephone or send a letter to query the resident's unusual pattern of electricity consumption.

"Call me crazy, if you have a query, what is with the SWAT team at the door and a 24-hour notice?" Vonn said. "It completely undermines the notion that there is a benign regulatory purpose behind this. We have heard this argument in the War on Drugs and the war on terror. If they say the word safety or security, you are just suppose to roll over and show your belly."

The civil liberties association has had several complaints about the Safety Standards Amendment Act and the inspection bylaws it has spawned.

"We are not ruling out a court challenge at all," Vonn said.