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"They love buildings deep in a field, where they can look out and see who's coming," said Mr. Pennal, on a recent tour of Merced County. Last year, the task force raided 56 laboratories, 36 in Merced alone. And the majority, Mr. Pennal said, were superlabs run by Mexican syndicates.
To demonstrate the ordinariness of a superlab, Mr. Pennal drove to one his task force raided more than a year ago. The farmer who owns the land was unaware of the site until it was raided and was still awaiting word from the county health department on when he could tear the building down. But when Mr. Pennal pulled up to the property, he discovered new trash bags full of the ingredients used to produce methamphetamine, from gloves to denatured alcohol to Coleman cooking fuel.
The abandoned farmhouse had once again been used to produce the drug, perhaps even the day before.
Superlab operators will rent a farmhouse and work on the property for as long as a year without the farmer who owns the property even realizing it, Mr. Pennal said. The cartels either pay off a farm worker to act as a lookout or rent the farm worker's house as a laboratory, paying the worker to keep quiet.
Earlier this month, an almond and fig farmer in Madera County stumbled onto a laboratory in an abandoned house on his 600-acre farm. "I noticed the windows were boarded from the inside, so I just went inside," said the farmer, who refused to give his name for fear of retaliation from the cartels.
What he found was a laboratory in midcook, capable of producing 40 pounds of methamphetamine a day. The drug is immediately cut once, often twice, for a yield of perhaps 80 to 120 pounds. On the street, its value would be $1 million to $2 million, depending on where it was sold. (Wholesale prices run from $4,500 to $8,000 a pound in California, $15,000 to $20,000 a pound on the East Coast, Mr. Pennal said.) The drug costs $1,300 to $1,800 a pound to produce, including labor and raw ingredients, an unpalatable assortment that can include crushed diet pills, nasal decongestants, even antifreeze.
Two people were arrested that day - a farm worker who lived next door in worker barracks who was suspected of having been hired to keep quiet and watch the laboratory, and a suspected laboratory employee found on the premises.
But just to remove the materials and catalog them took dozens of special agents, many of them outfitted with thousands of dollars worth of protective equipment. The ground around the Madera farm laboratory was white with the residue of methamphetamine byproducts.
"The farming situation being what it's been the last couple of years," said the farmer, "we're most worried about the hazardous materials and what it's going to do to the farm. If it costs a lot to clean, we just might give up the farm."
Officials say the laboratories create up to 10 pounds of waste for every pound of the drug. With an estimated output of well over 100,000 pounds a year, that means a million pounds of waste is being produced, including chemicals like red phosphorous, hydrochloric acid and hydriodic acid. One of the most dangerous byproducts is phosphine, which scientists say is so toxic only a few molecules can be deadly.
When a laboratory is found, the state hires waste cleanup companies to remove the materials inside (at a cost to taxpayers of approximately $10 million a year). But the cost of cleaning contaminated soil and groundwater is the property owner's burden. More and more, said John Anderson, the sheriff of Madera County, where about a dozen superlabs were found last year, owners are abandoning their properties.
"One farmer was hit with a $600,000 cleanup bill and he let the farm go for back taxes," Mr. Anderson said. "Now the county has to foot the cleanup costs."
There are other costs as well. Child protection agencies here, flooded with cases of neglect and abuse, trace the majority of the cases to parents who use methamphetamine, which causes paranoia and violent outbursts in some users. In addition, the Central Valley task forces recently began testing children they find in or near methamphetamine laboratories, because fumes produced in the cooking of the drug can destroy lung tissue and induce chemical pneumonia. Every single child, said Mr. Ruzzamenti, the drug enforcement director, has tested positive for methamphetamine or a toxic byproducts.
"Methamphetamine is the most significant drug threat in this district," said John Vincent, the United States attorney for the Eastern District, which covers the Central Valley. "About 75 percent of the drug cases that we bring annually are methamphetamine cases."
The penalties for methamphetamine production are high. Possession of 500 grams, just over a pound, commands a minimum mandatory sentence of 10 years in prison, and the higher the amount, the higher the sentence. A production line worker in a superlab - which employ five to six workers and a foreman - is liable on conviction to be sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
But Mr. Vincent noted that most raids resulted in arrests of low-level workers - the renewable resources - and left the source untouched. "It is difficult to work your way up the chain for two reasons," he said. "Lab workers are kept ignorant and they fear retaliation."
