A $750,000 pot growing operation was uncovered by Manteca Police Friday morning in a residential neighborhood some four blocks northeast of city hall.

Street Crimes Unit officers led by Sergeant Chris Mraz entered the home in the 300 block of Victory Avenue at about 10 a.m. and arrested Gabriel Juan Lopez on charges of cultivating marijuana and for being armed in the commission of a crime.

Officers said the Manteca man offered no resistance. He was transported to the Manteca jail for questioning before he was transferred to the San Joaquin County Jail later in the afternoon.  The Sheriff’s website failed to indicate a bail amount or a date for the man to appear in court in Manteca.

Officers did locate a loaded hand gun, ammunition and shoulder holster in the house.  A made-up bed was in the dining room but there was little other indication that anyone was actually living there.  A sectional couch and a television was the only other furniture.

Sgt. Mraz said Lopez had rented the two story home last summer and apparently began setting up the nursery operation which included some 250 marijuana plants with 25 high energy sodium grow lamps and an equal number of ballasts.  A video camera had been mounted above the front door so that the occupants would be able to see who was approaching the home.

Small black drip irrigation lines ran independently to each pot in the growing operation in the four bedrooms.

Mraz estimated the cost to the utility company by Lopez bypassing the electricity hookup amounted to about $60,000.  He said the owner of the property who lives in San Francisco was contacted by the police department.

The grow was located in all four upstairs bedrooms with the lamps hanging by chains from mounts on the ceilings and the plants were placed orderly on elevated platforms.  Fans and their related air filters kept the marijuana odor from drifting out into the neighborhood where other residents might have detected that pot was being grown.

The SCU officers spent most of the day taking down the nursery operation and its supporting lighting and exhaust equipment.  They used two dumpsters, one for the marijuana plants and the other for the growing equipment.

Two officers could be seen by neighbors throwing the potted plants out the front upstairs bedroom windows into the dumpster below.  The scent of marijuana could be detected throughout the close proximity of the grow site as the officers aired out the house.

Street Crime Unit officers were aided in the search by State Parole Agent Paul Richason who often accompanies them on parole searches in Manteca.

The home is south of Alameda Street and east of Union Road in a well-kept neighborhood.