420 Warrior
Well-Known Member
Officials to discuss new standards
Realtors are pushing for air quality standards to fill a regulatory vacuum involving former marijuana grow operations put up for sale.
How to protect the health - and the investment - of homebuyers is just one of the issues delegates from the real estate industry, civic authorities and law enforcement, will discuss at a three-day conference on marijuana grow ops opening in Banff on Tuesday.
"There's no way on earth we'll be able to manage the scope of this problem without the involvement and co-operation of the private sector," said Staff Sgt. Tom Hanson of Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, a provincial umbrella organization of 400 investigators that targets serious and organized crime.
In 2010, ALERT seized 100,615 marijuana plants and 655 kilograms of harvested bud - much of it grown in illegal operations concealed in homes.
But grow ops are far from strictly a policing issue: because they require large amounts of electricity, criminals commonly steal power by bypassing the electrical meter. In addition to being illegal, the makeshift wiring jobs often pose a fire hazard.
Homes used for grow operations are often rendered uninhabitable by toxic mould caused by the high humidity used to grow the plants.
Holes bashed into walls and foundations to route wires, water and ventilation equipment can com-promise a home's structural integrity.
All those issues led authorities to create the co-ordinated safety response team, which addresses the health and safety problems that still exist after police seize the marijuana and dismantle the grow op.
"Sooner or later, these (properties) come to market," said Bill Kirk, a local realtor who is a director on the Calgary Real Estate Board.
Officials have taken some steps to inform the public of properties that may have been grow ops in the past, such as a Alberta Health Services website that lists properties that have been deemed unfit for habitation.
But the registry has limitations, namely that it lists only properties that were raided by police.
A thorny issue the real estate industry is dealing with, Kirk said, is identifying the unknown number of grow ops that didn't make that list.
He said there needs to be more clearly defined rules surrounding a homeowner's and realtor's duty to disclose if a property had once been a grow operation - even if it has been remediated.
There are still cases when a seller doesn't know the home used to be a grow op, but a realtor may see signs that one was set up, dismantled and covered up before anyone detected it.
A listing realtor may want to disclose that information to potential buyers but runs the risk of breaching confidentiality requirements if the seller doesn't want them to reveal that information, Kirk said.
"Here we are, stuck in the middle," he said.
In any case, former grow ops are "stigmatized" properties that are difficult to sell even when they're remediated, said Kirk.
One possible way to minimize the risks and uncertainties to all the parties involved - buyers, sellers and realtors - is to establish provincial air quality standards that must be met for a home to be considered remediated.
"Air quality is the last undiscovered territory," Kirk said.
In 2011, the Alberta Health Services website listed 134 properties that had been raided by police and condemned after investigators found a grow op inside.
While the organizations at the Banff conference bring different perspectives to the table, there's agreement that statistic represents only a fraction of the true total.
"We need to accomplish (provincial standards) really quickly. The grow op problem is expanding," Kirk said.
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Location: Alberta, Canada
Source: Calgary Herald
Author: Jason Van Rassel
Contact: www2.canada.com
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Website: www.calgaryherald.com
Realtors are pushing for air quality standards to fill a regulatory vacuum involving former marijuana grow operations put up for sale.
How to protect the health - and the investment - of homebuyers is just one of the issues delegates from the real estate industry, civic authorities and law enforcement, will discuss at a three-day conference on marijuana grow ops opening in Banff on Tuesday.
"There's no way on earth we'll be able to manage the scope of this problem without the involvement and co-operation of the private sector," said Staff Sgt. Tom Hanson of Alberta Law Enforcement Response Teams, a provincial umbrella organization of 400 investigators that targets serious and organized crime.
In 2010, ALERT seized 100,615 marijuana plants and 655 kilograms of harvested bud - much of it grown in illegal operations concealed in homes.
But grow ops are far from strictly a policing issue: because they require large amounts of electricity, criminals commonly steal power by bypassing the electrical meter. In addition to being illegal, the makeshift wiring jobs often pose a fire hazard.
Homes used for grow operations are often rendered uninhabitable by toxic mould caused by the high humidity used to grow the plants.
Holes bashed into walls and foundations to route wires, water and ventilation equipment can com-promise a home's structural integrity.
All those issues led authorities to create the co-ordinated safety response team, which addresses the health and safety problems that still exist after police seize the marijuana and dismantle the grow op.
"Sooner or later, these (properties) come to market," said Bill Kirk, a local realtor who is a director on the Calgary Real Estate Board.
Officials have taken some steps to inform the public of properties that may have been grow ops in the past, such as a Alberta Health Services website that lists properties that have been deemed unfit for habitation.
But the registry has limitations, namely that it lists only properties that were raided by police.
A thorny issue the real estate industry is dealing with, Kirk said, is identifying the unknown number of grow ops that didn't make that list.
He said there needs to be more clearly defined rules surrounding a homeowner's and realtor's duty to disclose if a property had once been a grow operation - even if it has been remediated.
There are still cases when a seller doesn't know the home used to be a grow op, but a realtor may see signs that one was set up, dismantled and covered up before anyone detected it.
A listing realtor may want to disclose that information to potential buyers but runs the risk of breaching confidentiality requirements if the seller doesn't want them to reveal that information, Kirk said.
"Here we are, stuck in the middle," he said.
In any case, former grow ops are "stigmatized" properties that are difficult to sell even when they're remediated, said Kirk.
One possible way to minimize the risks and uncertainties to all the parties involved - buyers, sellers and realtors - is to establish provincial air quality standards that must be met for a home to be considered remediated.
"Air quality is the last undiscovered territory," Kirk said.
In 2011, the Alberta Health Services website listed 134 properties that had been raided by police and condemned after investigators found a grow op inside.
While the organizations at the Banff conference bring different perspectives to the table, there's agreement that statistic represents only a fraction of the true total.
"We need to accomplish (provincial standards) really quickly. The grow op problem is expanding," Kirk said.
News Hawk - 420 Warrior 420 MAGAZINE
Location: Alberta, Canada
Source: Calgary Herald
Author: Jason Van Rassel
Contact: www2.canada.com
Copyright: 2012 Canwest Publishing Inc.
Website: www.calgaryherald.com
