Some high school students in Connecticut soon will be studying agriculture with equipment once used to grow marijuana.
Police in Shelton, Conn., have donated plant lights, heaters, and other supplies seized from a pot-growing operation to the Trumbull Regional Agriscience and Biotechnology Center, a secondary school program based in Trumbull that serves students from nine towns.
Investigators found the equipment last year in a local building where 37 marijuana plants were being grown. The discovery led to two arrests. Police decided to give the gear to the agricultural center rather than destroy or sell it, investigators said.
The center plans to use the supplies, valued at more than $5,000, to teach year-round units on hydroponics, in which plants are grown without soil.
Christopher Allen, a plant-science teach er at the center, said the equipment from the marijuana operation is top-notch. “Money was no object to them,” he said.