Owners of Mobile Home Park Plead Innocent in Sewage Case

CORONA — Two owners of a mobile home park just outside the city limits pleaded not guilty Wednesday to a criminal charge that they allowed discharge of sewage and other waste in violation of the state health code.

Gerald E. Inman and Rita Inman of Yorba Linda, owners of La Corona Mobile Home Park, will return to Corona Municipal Court June 19 for a pretrial hearing in the misdemeanor case, a court clerk said.

The Inmans also face an ongoing trial of another kind. Residents of more than half of the park’s 39 occupied homes this month began a rent strike to protest health and safety problems they say have plagued the park for years.

The residents, members of La Corona Mobile Home Owners Assn., also said the Inmans have failed to live up to promises that they would install recreational facilities and improve conditions.

Gerald Inman has denied the charges, saying the residents knew what they were getting when they moved into the park. In a recent interview, he said that just a few residents of the park are responsible for the complaints to the Riverside County Health Department and for instigating the rent strike.

County records show seven verified complaints of sewage on the ground in 1985, six in 1984 and “similar patterns for the prior years also,” wrote Damian Meins, a Riverside County health inspector.

A March 12 flood that prompted the current criminal charge against the Inmans was “only the latest in a long history of waste-water violations,” according to Meins.