A Massachusetts police chief is warning about the dangers of illegal marijuana cultivation facilities after his local department started making arrests in connection with a “large-scale growing operation.”

Grafton Police Chief Neil A. Minardi says his department has arrested a 27-year-old man on charges related to the weed facility after officers discovered a “significant quantity of marijuana plants and evidence of a large-scale growing operation” in a residential neighborhood.

“These unregulated illegal grow operations pose serious dangers to our residential communities,” Minardi has said. “The modifications required to power these facilities create significant fire hazards that can endanger entire neighborhoods.

“Similar operations in residential neighborhoods have caused homes to be destroyed,” he added, “and/or condemned and families displaced because of unsafe wiring and overloaded electrical systems.”

Minardi is providing the insight after officers executed a search warrant at the residence on Friday, following a “lengthy investigation” by Grafton detectives and the Blackstone Valley Drug Task Force. He added that officers recovered 100 points of marijuana at a home on Kessell Street, the Worcester Telegram & Gazette reported.

The police chief in the Worcester County town said that he expected “similar charges … for additional subjects who have been identified as participating in this operation.”

“Beyond fire risks,” Minardi said in a statement, “these operations often involve hazardous chemicals, mold growth from excessive humidity, and structural damage to properties. The strong odors and increased traffic associated with these facilities also diminish quality of life for neighboring families.”

Massachusetts state law allows a person to grow up to six marijuana plants at a time in their home. If two or more people live in a house, they can grow up to 12 plants, per the state’s Cannabis Control Commission.

“This was not the case of someone who was only permitted to have 12 plants, and they grew 30,” Minardi told the Telegram & Gazette. “This was a large-scale growing facility we suspect was part of a larger operation.”

Minardi did not provide the name of the man arrested. His department posted an advisory early Friday, alerting residents of a “large police presence in the Kessell Street and Oak Street neighborhood. The department added that there was “NO danger to the public.”

This is the latest takedown of a large-scale marijuana growing operation in Massachusetts.

In the fall, the Massachusetts State Police arrested three Chinese Nationals in connection with growing upwards of 2,380 marijuana plants at a home in Ashfield, in Franklin County.

State Police, in collaboration with Ashfield and Goshen police, also found roughly 109 pounds of processed cannabis during a raid, the Greenfield Recorder reported.

That came after a federal grand jury in the summer indicted seven Chinese nationals in connection with an alleged network of interconnected grow houses in Massachusetts and Maine that they operated to cultivate and distribute marijuana.

Massachusetts US Attorney Leah Foley accused that group of smuggling other Chinese nationals into the U.S. to work in the grow homes, found inside single-family properties in Braintree, Melrose, and Greenfield, among other locations in the Bay State. The workers didn’t have access to their passports until they repaid their smuggling debt.

“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” Foley said in a statement at the time of the bust last July. “These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise – building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover.”