OWNER GIVES UP HOME PARK : KERN COUNTY GETS SITE IN LEAD LAWSUIT.

Byline: Jim Skeen Daily News Staff Writer

A mobile-home park built on top of a former burn dump will become the property of Kern County as part of the settlement of a lawsuit over lead contamination.

Kern County will receive the 20-acre Sands Mobile Home Estates, 14929 Lone Butte Road, as part of the settlement with the park's owner, Said Jalleo. Details of the settlement are being kept secret by order of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

``In essence, our insurers are coming up with some money that will be paid to Mr. Jalleo,'' said Bob Woods, an attorney for the county. ``The county will take the property back.''

Kern County has no plans for the mobile-home park at this point. Among the possibilities are using it for a waste transfer station or as an equipment and material storage area, Woods said.

A mediation session was held June 17 to try to resolve claims by 14 former tenants of the mobile-home park, but no settlement was offered, said Tim Lemucchi, a Bakersfield attorney representing the former tenants.

Kern County's settlement with Jalleo has weakened the tenants' efforts to appeal a court decision that sided with the county, Lemucchi said.

``The tenants are worse off now. He (Jalleo) was going to underwrite the cost of the appeal,'' Lemucchi said. ``Their situation is pretty grim right now.''

The tenants will have to decide within the next few weeks if they wish to continue with the appeal process, Lemucchi said. In the meantime, there is a Kern County Superior Court hearing Aug. 8 to determine how to divide $42,000 Jalleo agreed to pay the tenants from an earlier settlement negotiation.

In November, a federal court jury rejected claims that the county wrongfully had contaminated the property that later was used for the mobile-home park. The jury also rejected the claim that the county failed to disclose the contamination when the property was sold.

Kern County officials argued that the dump was closed in accordance with the environmental laws of the time and its use as a burn dump was disclosed when the county sold the land in 1983 to a developer, who resold it to Jalleo five years later.

The developer has since died.

Lemucchi argued that Kern County had failed to comply with the California Environmental Quality Act by not requiring an environmental impact report when the land was rezoned for residential use.

Before the case had gone to trial, U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wagner rejected the claim that the Kern County Board of Supervisors was negligent for not requiring an environmental impact report.

An environmental study was made, but it indicated that no further reports were required because the project would do no significant harm - a decision referred to as a negative declaration.

The judge properly rejected that claim, Woods said, because state statutes require that legal challenges be filed within 90 days of a negative declaration.

The legal battle over the contaminated property began after Kern County officials disclosed in November 1992 that high levels of lead were detected in soil at the mobile-home park.

Kern County had burned refuse in trenches when it operated a dump at the site from 1957 to 1981. When the dump was shut down, the trenches were covered with 3 feet of soil.

In tests required by a state law that calls for checks of all present and former dumps, county officials measured soluble lead - lead that can enter the body - at levels ranging from 3 parts per million to 12.1 parts per million inside the mobile-home park and up to 28.3 parts per million just to the west.

Kern County health officials consider any level over 5 parts per million unhealthful.

Lead attacks the nervous system and causes a range of harm to children, from a drop in academic performance to mental retardation. In high doses, lead can cause neurological damage in adults. Seven mobile homes, six of them occupied at the time, were moved off a 14-acre section of the property. The area was capped with clean dirt and fenced off.

The disclosure triggered a lawsuit by 14 residents of the park against the county.

Jalleo, the park's owner, filed a lawsuit against the county and the property's previous owner, Floyd Blanchard. Jalleo, who bought the land in 1988, stated that Blanchard did not disclose that the property had been a burn dump. Blanchard died before the case came to trial.

The two lawsuits were combined by the federal court.