[420 Girl]

It's still a lot of pot, but not as much as drug agents first thought.

The size of a Midvale Road marijuana seizure was downgraded Thursday from 30,000 to 18,650 plants after officers counted each plant by hand, according to Law Enforcement Against Drugs, the Lower Valley task force in charge of the case.

That bumps the estimated value of the crop back to a conservative figure of $15 million instead of $20 million, said Sgt. Rick Beghtol, the task force supervisor.

But Yakima County still remains in the lead for the state's largest single outdoor marijuana seizure so far this year. A 10,000-plant grow ripped from a cornfield east of Zillah was the first major seizure this year.

Since then, Benton County reported a 12,000-plant grow and Grant County officials tore out 9,000 plants.

Beghtol said the size of the latest case may prompt federal prosecutors to take over charges against the two suspects, a 21-year-old from Prosser and a 20-year-old from Hayward, Calif.

The two remain in custody at the Yakima County jail on $250,000 bail each, although they are also under an immigration hold. They are scheduled to be arraigned today.

They were arrested Tuesday night when a neighboring farmer saw the men tending the field in the 2500 block of Midvale Road. He went to contact them over concerns that they were diverting his irrigation water. When he recognized the marijuana, he left and called police, investigators said.

Drug agents based their first estimate on the number of plants in each row and the size of the growing area. Even though their math was off this time, Beghtol said he expects to find even bigger plots later this summer in the Yakima Valley.

That's when drug agents usually target outdoor grows. Big finds have been made in recent years in both Yakima and Klickitat counties.

The plants from the Midvale location will be burned once investigators store a representative sample as trial evidence, Beghtol said.

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