NEWBURY PARK : County to Help Pay for Cleaning Up Lot

A Newbury Park lot that has long been the target of neighborhood complaints about junked cars, trailers, building materials, trash and even an abandoned dam will be partly cleaned up under an agreement reached Tuesday between the county and a representative of the property’s late owner.

Under the agreement, the county will spend as much as $10,000 to clear building material and other potential fire hazards from the 1.5-acre lot at 1989 Mountain View Drive, a private road. The county would be repaid after the lot is sold.

The owner, Erkki Sarkinen, died in November, 1988.

But even more than $10,000 will be needed before the property ceases to be an eyesore, said Supervisor Madge L. Schaefer, who is spearheading the cleanup of the makeshift dump, which falls within her district.

“Now, at least, the neighbors won’t be threatened with losing their fire insurance,” Schaefer told her fellow supervisors, who approved an emergency resolution declaring the property a health, safety and welfare nuisance. Jim Porcaro, a neighbor who operates a grading business, estimated that it would cost $25,000 more to complete the cleanup. Bill Tanner, Schaefer’s administrative assistant, said she is working with various county agencies to finish the project.

At least one neighbor has been notified that his fire insurance will be canceled because of the lot’s condition, Schaefer said.

John Moyle, one of several neighbors who appeared at the supervisors’ meeting Tuesday, said he is concerned that particles of asbestos from the material stored on the property will become airborne, threatening neighbors’ health.

Moyle, a physicist who has lived in the area for two years, said neighbors told him that Sarkinen’s property has been an eyesore since the mid-1970s.

Schaefer said that in 1981 the county obtained an injunction to prevent Sarkinen, who was in the construction business, from completing a dam and lake he was building to collect runoff from rain. But Moyle said that on a recent visit he found that the dam and lake, now dry, were completed.

In 1986, Schaefer said, Sarkinen was convicted of several violations, including the open storage of 25 abandoned autos. He was placed on probation and ordered to correct the violations. But, neighbors said, by the time he died of a heart attack in his late 50s, little of the work had been done.

Moyle said all but five of the abandoned cars have been removed, but that much of the construction material is still visible on the lot.

Moyle said the neighborhood is faced with yet another nuisance: People who have read media accounts about the property have taken to driving into the area to see it for themselves.