The Polk County Sheriff’s Office continues to discover meth labs throughout the county, with another discovered this week off Edgerton Road in the Sunny View community.
A container used to make meth was discovered on Wednesday, June 27 in a mobile home park in Sunny View.
Officers were executing a search warrant at the mobile home park when an officer discovered a two-liter drink bottle with evidence of methamphetamine on a wooded lot.
There were also small propane tanks near the bottle, officers said.
Officers said because the bottles had been there for some time and the number of people who may have lived nearby in that time it will be difficult to determine who is responsible for the lab.
The N.C. State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) was called in to assist the sheriff’s office.
Advanced Environmental Options Inc. cleaned up the lab.
This is the sixth meth lab found in Polk County in 2012. Another meth lab was discovered in 2007 in the same, unnamed mobile home park, which includes Peach Lane and Water Lane in the Sunny View community.
Some of the meth labs Polk County has discovered this year were located at homes and others were located either in the woods, on the side of the road or outside homes.
The county’s fourth and fifth meth labs of the year were discovered earlier this month, one along River Road near Tryon, and another outside a home at 89 Appaloosa Lane. No arrests have yet been made because the former residents of the Appaloosa home no longer live in the area.
Polk County’s largest meth lab in history was discovered in August 2011 in a Sunny View home. Another meth lab was discovered in Green Creek in early November 2011, and the county’s third meth lab was discovered in Lynn later in November 2011.
In January of this year, the sheriff’s office discovered three meth labs in the woods in Mill Spring.
Wednesday’s discovery was the ninth meth lab discovered in Polk County in less than a year. Prior to 2011, no meth labs had been discovered in the county since 2007.
Most of the meth labs discovered in Polk County involve plastic bottles and chemicals used in what is known as the “shake and bake” method of cooking methamphetamine.