Carson Mobile Home Park : Charges Filed in Methane Gas Leak

The City of Carson has charged the owner of a mobile home park built on a former dump with violating state laws by failing to control seepage of potentially explosive methane gas.

The misdemeanor charges against Anton Berkovitz, a Palos Verdes Peninsula resident who owns the Imperial Carson mobile home park, are the first by the city against a park owner that involve methane, a foul-smelling gas produced by the decomposition of garbage. The charges were filed March 11 in Compton Municipal Court.

Berkovitz did not return repeated calls for his comment.

The site, at 21111 S. Dolores St., is a former landfill that began operations in 1948 and was converted in 1966 to a mobile home park.

Election Timing

The timing of the case has raised questions that the filing was politically motivated.

Although officials have known of methane seepage at the park for more than five years, the case was filed one month before the April 12 City Council election, in which three incumbents are facing opposition from mobile home owners. At a council meeting crowded with mobile home owners last week, City Atty. Glenn Watson announced that the case had been filed

“Strange happenings pop up at election time. You follow me?” commented Chuck Massman, chairman of the Mobile Home Action Committee, during a break in the meeting.

Massman, who favors challenger Aaron Carter against incumbents Kay Calas, Vera Robles DeWitt and Michael Mitoma, declined to elaborate.

Calas, DeWitt and Mitoma denied that the city filed the charges to help them win votes among mobile home owners. Calas and DeWitt said they learned of the case only when Watson made his announcement. Mitoma, who had asked city officials to review the file on the Imperial Carson park several weeks earlier, said he had not asked for any prosecution.

Decided a Month Earlier

Carson district engineer Gary Nehrenberg, the city official in charge of monitoring code compliance at the park, said that a month before Mitoma expressed interest in the case, he and other officials had decided to recommend that the city attorney file the charges.

Nehrenberg said the city decided to act now because of frustration with Berkovitz, who bought the park about 1 1/2 years ago.

“What (Berkovitz) has basically told us is that he would like to do the work and will do the work when he can get the funding to do it, but that he doesn’t have the money,” Nehrenberg said.

“It just reached the point that too much time was going by, so we felt a need to initiate an action. . . . There are high readings of methane gas underground,” he added.

As long as the gas stays underground, he said, “it isn’t much of a problem.” But if it were to collect in a home, there could be an explosion.

The specific charges against Berkovitz allege that a methane gas collection system installed at the park has not received an operating permit from the Southern California Air Quality Management District, and that Berkovitz is not monitoring methane gas under mobile homes as required by state law.

Nehrenberg said that the methane collection system at Imperial Carson, which may operate under an interim construction permit, frequently is not functioning.

“We checked (Thursday) and the gas collection system still was not operating,” Nehrenberg said.

Drainage Problem

A third charge, unrelated to the methane case, accuses Berkovitz of neglecting a water drainage problem under one of the mobile homes.

The maximum penalty for a misdemeanor is a $1,000 fine and a six-month jail term.

Imperial Carson residents also complained at a council meeting last week that: ground subsidence is making roads buckle; holes up to 12 inches deep are appearing in lawns; repairs are not being made on park facilities, and insurance companies canceled the homeowner policies of several residents because of the land settling.

Carson has several dozen former landfills, but Imperial Carson is the only mobile home park built on one.