Rail Yard Neighbors Beat a Track to City Hall : Moorpark: People who live near Metrolink facility say noise and pollution are making their lives miserable.

Lifelong Moorpark resident Daniel Garcia was telling his elected representatives about the pain Metrolink commuter trains have caused him when his voice was overcome with emotion and he left council chambers in tears.

“This is completely ruining my life,” he said. “We have to listen to the engines, to the air conditioners, and we have the smoke. You have no idea how much smoke those trains put out.”

Sitting in his Cornett Avenue home Thursday, Garcia and neighbors shared stories of being roused from a sound sleep by engines that start revving at 3 a.m. Then he showed a videotape he shot in March of black smoke billowing out the top of a Metrolink train.

“They don’t believe us, they don’t believe us,” said Henry Bravo, who has lived in the same McFadden Avenue house since 1952. “They don’t believe the problem that we have here.”

Within days of Metrolink’s October debut, residents near the layover facility where the trains spend the night began complaining to city officials about intolerable levels of noise and smoke in their neighborhood. “The mayor always says, ‘We’re going to do something. We’re working on it,’ ” said Garcia, who recently put his home of 37 years up for sale. “The mayor always promises results. But nothing ever gets done.”

Mayor Paul Lawrason said he has called Metrolink and county Transportation Commission officials to discuss the problems. He added that the city sent a letter May 19 asking rail officials for relief from the noise and smoke.

Richard Stanger, executive director of the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, wrote back May 28, saying he was aware of the complaints and was taking steps to address them.

Residents said they have seen no changes.

But after Garcia’s impassioned plea at Wednesday’s council meeting, city officials vowed to resolve the problems.

“I think it’s going to take the part of the entire City Council to be involved and be a little less of a nice guy at this point,” Councilman John Wozniak said Thursday. “We have a problem and we need to resolve the problem.”

Four commuter trains leave Moorpark each weekday morning bound for downtown Los Angeles, returning each night to a layover facility west of Moorpark Avenue and north of Poindexter Avenue--about 200 feet from Garcia’s front yard.

Wozniak said the rail authority, which operates Metrolink, may be in violation of state environmental guidelines because it issued reassurances that the layover facility would have no impact on the area.

“That has proven to be a false statement,” Wozniak said. “There are impacts. There are major impacts to that neighborhood and they’re being ignored at this point.”

Councilman Scott Montgomery said that he and Wozniak suggested about six months ago that the city sue the rail authority over the problems, but couldn’t find a third vote on the council supporting litigation.

“We felt pretty strongly that even if we didn’t win, we’d at least get their attention,” Montgomery said. “They just don’t believe that there are significant impacts.”

Stanger said Thursday that he was unaware that noise and smoke problems were persisting and pledged to do what he could to resolve the complaints.

“We need to make this facility acceptable to the community,” Stanger said. “It’s not our intent to be, you know, an annoyance.”

Immediately after the trains arrive each night, Stanger said, they should be connected to electrical hookups for maintenance work and their engines turned off. He said the first train should not fire its engine until 4:15 a.m. or so each morning--giving it about an hour to warm up.

“Clearly, something is going on that leads the council and the neighborhood to believe that we’re doing something wrong and, if we are, we need to correct it,” he said.

Trains were kept running longer than normal during the first few weeks of Metrolink service, Stanger said, because the service did not yet have the proper electrical hookups. The equipment was received in early December and now there is no reason to keep the train engines running while they are being stored, he said.

Residents hope the latest round of discussions will bring them relief.

“All of a sudden, we’ve got something extremely undesirable here,” said Evelyn Kennaley, a Cornett Avenue resident since 1957. “It’s dirtying our air and making our homes unlivable.”