By Elizabeth Zach, RCAC staff writer

California trailer park residents are more likely to have polluted water and poor water delivery than residents using other municipal utilities, according to a recent study in the journal Environmental Justice.

“The story is that there is a pretty consistent neglect by the manager operating the system, either not paying the bills or not monitoring the quality,” Greg Pierce, the study’s lead author and a researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles told Circle of Blue. “It’s the larger issue of the park being owned by a person who is not doing much to maintain the system.”

Mobile home parks have multiple risk factors. Their water systems are small—from a few dozen up to several hundred hook-ups—leading to a small economy of scale and limited finances, poor service and increased water quality violations.

One option is to connect a smaller, poorly performing system to larger municipal lines, Pierce said. A 2015 state law allows the California State Water board to force such mergers but until now, has only mandated one consolidation. In 2017, at least three of the 34 voluntary unions involved mobile home parks.

To read more, go here: http://www.circleofblue.org/2017/world/california-mobile-home-park-residents-face-barriers-clean-water/