RESIDENTS ON WATER-MAIN WATCH.

Byline: Associated Press 

Residents of the Susana Woods Mobile Home Park say no one mentioned the potentially deadly high-pressure water pipelines that coursed underground there when they plunked down tens of thousands of dollars for homes more than 17 years ago.

Now that they know about the pipelines that sit underneath their homes, which authorities say could burst and spurt 45-foot geysers into the air, the nine families say they are too entrenched and too poor to relocate without assistance.

And so the nine homeowners wait. They wait for legal battles - to which they are not party - to continue, or for the mobile-home park owners to finance their relocation or for frustrated water officials to take matters into their own hands.

Twice within the past year - most recently Nov. 21 - Ventura County Superior Court Judge Ken W. Riley ordered the park's owners - Susana Woods Associates, Rosemary Lamont-Williams and Carole Bird Corp. - to pay for relocating the homes.

Riley's first order gave the mobile-home park owners from March to Oct. 20 to move the homes. October came and went without any relocation occurring. The more recent permanent injunction ordered the owners to move the residents and pay for all the costs plus Calleguas Municipal Water District's legal fees after Oct. 20, but still the homes sit.

Attorneys for the park owners haven't commented on the case, but court documents filed in opposition to the preliminary injunction in March explain some of their opposition.

The residents ``have remained in their present location during all of these years (as well as the Northridge Earthquake) without incident,'' lawyers wrote last March. ``It will be extremely difficult, expensive and time-consuming (taking approximately nine months) to move the mobile homes off of the plaintiff's easement.''

It's unclear if the property owners knew whether they were building on the easement illegally when the first of nine families moved in there nearly 22 years ago. It wasn't until water district surveyors doing routine maintenance noticed the buildings in March 1996 that residents learned about the easements, they say.

Officials said they asked the property owners to move the homes quickly.

``Calleguas Municipal Water District has bent over backwards to work with Susana Woods to get these mobile homes out of here,'' said Thomas P. Anderle, Calleguas' lawyer. ``There have been numerous promises and agreements for the mobile homes to be taken out of the easement. None of those promises have been kept.''

The water district gained easement rights to the 35-foot-wide strip of land in question in 1975, before the mobile homes were in place, strictly forbidding any kind of building on the land. Water officials say that under the strain of an earthquake or a massive power outage, the water mains could blow sky-high, possibly killing anyone above them.

Those easement rights were meant to protect public safety around the water pipes and to facilitate repairs of the water pipes should an accident occur.

``Every time we get a little tremble, we're frightened people,'' said Roberta Rose, one of the nine homeowners. ``We've already seen film that shows the break on Madera (Road). Not one of us could save ourselves if that happened. Not the children. Not the moms and pops.''

Although water main breaks are not common, they do occur on occasion with fearsome force, as demonstrated by a March burst under Madera Road that sent chunks of asphalt into the air and left a gaping, 30-foot by 12-foot sinkhole. No one was injured in that event.