WATER AGENCY FINES OWNER OF PARADISE RANCH.

Byline: Staff and Wire Service

CASTAIC - A mobile home park's owner was fined more than $1 million by the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board for illegally discharging wastewater with high levels of mineral salts and bacteria, officials said Wednesday

Paradise Ranch Mobile Home Park owner Santiago Associates must pay $1.02 million in fines for discharging wastewater that seeped into a groundwater basin, water quality officials said.

``It is critical that we protect our drinking-water sources by properly managing wastewater,'' the regional board chairman, David Nahai, said in a printed statement. ``Elevated levels of salt in water make it undrinkable. Consuming water with coliform can result in serious illness, including gastroenteritis.''

The 343-acre park east of Interstate 5 at Templin Highway has about 94 mobile homes. The discharge contained salts, bacteria and other inorganic matter believed to have come from water-softener systems used by some residents and from the park's wastewater treatment plant, water officials said.

The company has 90 days to appeal the board's decision. Officials with Santiago Associates LLC in Tustin did not return calls for comment.

In March 1989, the Los Angeles Regional Water Quality Control Board allowed the mobile home park to discharge its wastewater on the property as long as it did not exceed specified levels of salt, bacteria and other compounds.

Natural organisms in the soil filter and clean wastewater containing limited quantities of salt, bacteria, fluoride, sulfate, boron and other dissolved solids, officials said. But officials said those limits were exceeded on 2,387 days between November 1998 and June 2005.