Overflow of waste at Velladao Mobile Home Park has residents
living in foul conditions
Gilroy – When Jimena Alvarado isn’t vomiting, she’s usually too sick to eat. The stench of sewage outside her bedroom window is overpowering.
The 3-year-old girl is one of several children who suffer bouts of nausea at the Velladao Mobile Home Park in South Gilroy.
A group of women who live in the ramshackle trailers tucked out of sight off Monterey Road say that park manager Cal West Asset Management, of San Jose, and owner Thomas Velladao, of Petaluma, have failed to find a permanent fix for repeated sewage spills.
Cal West owner Robert Collins blamed residents for the health threat, saying neighbors cause overflows by removing sewage clean-out caps when their toilets back up. To solve the problem, he said he will install protective boxes over the caps on the above-ground sewer lines.
Livia Alvarado, the mother of Jimena and 8-year-old Rosalva, said she has never tampered with sewer lines, but has lived with the problem for four years.
“Every time the pipe overflows, that’s when the kids get sick,” said Alvarado, who lives with her daughters in a pink aluminum trailer. “It’s hard to eat. It’s hard to sleep. It’s hard to even breathe because the smell is so strong.”
Alvarado said Cal West fixes the pipes within 24 hours when residents call to complain, but within days the sewage begins leaking again.
“It doesn’t stay fixed for more than a week,” she said. “When they fix the pipe, they leave and don’t clean up the sewage and the rats start coming out.”
Collins, who is on vacation in Florida, said he received the latest call for repairs Tuesday and expected the plumber to fix the problem the next day. On Thursday, sewage remained pooled outside several trailers.
Velladao Mobile Home Park, located at 6310 Monterey Road, is a mish-mash of about two dozen trailers around a web of narrow driveways. Cal West has managed the property for seven years, though city officials said the park has operated at the site for many years. The city does not have jurisdiction over the park, which falls under state authority as a transportation facility.
The state receives complaints about sewage outbreaks at the park every 12 to 18 months, according to Ron Javor, assistant deputy director of code enforcement at California Housing and Community Development. He said trailers at Velladao are connected to underground septic tanks, which can overflow when groundwater levels rise during heavy rain periods. The agency last cited the park for septic violations in December.
“We only have records of two complaints, two responses, and two prompt clean-ups,” Javor said of the last few years. “Since December we have received no complaints from park residents or anybody else.”
But according to neighbors, sewage outbreaks at Velladao are far more frequent than state records reflect. They have pictures from several points in the last year showing fecal matter and other waste gathered in pools by their trailers. Martha Ybarra, who lives next door to Alvarado, has video footage of rats swarming in the waste between their homes.
The neighbors say they have had little luck addressing the issue by working with Phyllis Katz, an attorney for California Rural Legal Assistance, in Gilroy.
Katz declined to comment for the story, citing attorney-client privilege. She only said that sewage outbreaks have been “a recurring issue.”
In June 2005, she wrote Collins a letter notifying him that residents had agreed to pay rent for the month based on assurances that the management company would fix drinking-water lines. Yesenia Banda, another neighbor, said she and the other women had no running water for much of last year. She said they were forced to collect water with pitchers from leaking pipes.
Collins said the company spent $25,000 repairing the water lines in 2005. He claims that neighbors are complaining about sewage to retaliate against the company, which has ordered the removal of illegal structures. In December, a state inspector cited Banda and the park for a trailer-type shack by her home.
Collins said Cal West could lose its license to operate if the structure is not removed.
For the moment, state officials said their top priority is resolving the wastewater problems at Velladao. An official with HCD’s code enforcement division will inspect the property this morning. If the inspection fails to determine the source of the overflows, the agency will order Cal West to hire a septic expert to study the problem.
In the most extreme case, HCD could order the park to connect to city sewer lines, though officials try to avoid that option.
“We don’t want to cause rents to go up by causing the owner to do unnecessary capital improvements,” Javor said.
Alvarado is a single mother who pays $379 a month for rent and up to $200 for utilities, depending on the time of year, to keep her trailer at Velladao. She works in Hollister but stayed home from work this week to care for her daughters.
“I’ve been praying for someone to help us,” she said. “We’re frustrated. We wonder if we’ll ever find somebody that will treat us like human beings.”
