Cleanup crews waded through garbage and collected chemicals for 21 straight hours at the site of an enormous meth lab on 19th Street, the head of the Hamilton County Sheriff's Office narcotics division said.
Lt. Van Hinton said Thursday that the bust the day before is among the "top three cleanups" on record in the county. He said crews pulled out "bags after bags after bags" filled with chemical waste from more than 100 cooks who used the house, about 1,100 square feet, as a collective dumping site.
"Every room was like walking into snow," Lt. Hinton said. "The suspect would go in, cook and just dump the waste on the floor or discard it to the side. And he continued that repeatedly until the whole house was consumed with this stuff."
Lt. Hinton said investigators hauled 15 50-gallon bags containing solid "meth trash" and 71 massive containers filled with toxic liquids. Crews found high volumes of Coleman fuel, muriatic acid, liquid heat, lye, Drano, ephedrine and glassware stained with methamphetamine residue.
Timothy Johnson, 34, was arrested in a house next to the lab site at 2302 E. 19th St. The county sheriff's office issued warrants for Mr. Johnson and several others, but the case will be prosecuted by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, according to Hamilton County Sheriff's Office spokeswoman Sgt. Janice Atkinson.
"It was the biggest bust I've ever seen," said Sgt. Atkinson, who worked for five years in narcotics with the Chattanooga Police Department.
Several others believed to have ties to the site were arrested before Wednesday's bust, but authorities have not released their names.
Drug officers from Chattanooga, East Ridge, Lookout Mountain, Ga., Red Bank, Soddy-Daisy and the Tennessee and Georgia bureaus of investigation assisted at the scene.
"I don't want to get into the specifics of it, but that tells us a lot about the involvement here," said Tommy Farmer, director of the Tennessee Meth Task Force, referring to how many people from different regions used the drug house.
Chattanooga police believe a Tuesday house fire in Hixson was caused by another lab, and Mr. Farmer said there is a "good chance" the two locations were linked.
The evidence taken from Wednesday's bust could lead local police departments to weaken an adaptive and resourceful dealer chain, law officers said.
"Sometimes you have to cut the head off the dragon and continue to investigate to deal with the underlings," Lt. Hinton said. "This investigation doesn't stop with him (Mr. Johnson)."
WIDESPREAD REACH
BY THE NUMBERS815: 2008 Tennessee lab seizures1,437: 2009 Tennessee lab seizures152: 2008 Georgia lab seizures165: 2009 Georgia lab seizuresSource: Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force, Georgia Bureau of InvestigationCOUNTY BY COUNTYCounty 2008 2009Bledsoe 2 4Grundy 3 11Hamilton 32 85Marion 6 19McMinn 55 150Meigs 7 27Polk 6 10Rhea 1 17Sequatchie 12 29Source: Tennessee Methamphetamine Task Force
Authorities said the investigation will stretch across state lines, covering an expansive regional network.
The Tennessee Meth Task Force provides a free computer database for law enforcement agencies and pharmacies to track in-state purchases of psuedoephedrine, the main ingredient used to manufacture meth.
All Tennessee investigators interviewed said they will use that system to track those arrested Wednesday, but Georgia officials must rely on handwritten pharmacy logs and individual store records.
"We generally work more meth labs than any other circuit in the state, but it's difficult," said Patrick Doyle, deputy commander of the Lookout Mountain Judicial Task Force, which covers Catoosa, Dade and Walker counties.
"There's more travel, more physical work and it takes a lot more time," he said.
Mr. Farmer celebrated the bust as a major flushing out of drug dealers, but he admitted that the network is too elusive to penetrate fully.
"These groups are fluid like water, moving around to different groups and finding each other," he said. "If their guy gets arrested, they'll move to a friend to get what they need."
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