River Community Advocates by Jennifer Wertz and Mark Emmett
As the weather improves and the winter shelter has closed once again, the homeless have been handed tents and sleeping bags to go out and trespass in the woods and set up illegal camps, instead of being directed to seek legal shelter elsewhere. With these camps come massive amounts of trash and human waste that pollute our river, as well as the very real danger of escaped camp fires, of which there were eight last year per
The Guerneville Community Alliance began walking illegal trespassing encampments more than a year ago. We offer encouragement and resources to seek legal shelter. Our resource packets include phone lists for available shelters in Sonoma County, local NA & AA meeting schedules, a payphone calling card, and a bus pass to get to a legal shelter. We coordinate with private property owners, our environmental health agency, local law enforcement, and local fire agencies when we identify problems that need to be resolved. There are many hidden encampments that we are unaware of unless someone living nearby identifies them and contacts us. We are willing to try and assist the community in resolving these types of situations.
For the Sheriff’s Dept. to enforce trespassing on private property, there are two requirements that both have to be met. The property has to be properly posted with no trespassing signs “along all exterior boundaries and at all roads and trails entering the property”. In addition, a Trespass Action Request form has to be completed by the property owner and filed with the Sheriff’s dept. EVERY six months. These forms can be obtained from the Guerneville Sheriff’s sub-station (Sonoma County Sheriff’s dispatch 707-565-2121 or Guerneville sub-station 707-869-0202), or by contacting the Guerneville Community Alliance, see contact info below.
One of the obstacles in our area is that there are many vacant properties that have out of town owners who may not be aware that there is a problem on their property. A useful tool that anyone can use to identify the address, parcel number, and owner information of a property is a free commercial website – makeloveland.com. It can be difficult to identify parcels in wooded areas, but this website allows you to scroll over parcels until you find the one you are looking for. The Guerneville Community Alliance has additional resources to identify parcel information, and we may be able to physically meet at a location in which it is difficult to determine the parcel number and/or address. We have form letters ready to send to out of town property owners, which inform them there is a problem they may not be aware of, and offers to help them get it resolved without any further fines and/or legal action. We try to include photographs, and it is helpful if people forward photographs of the problem to us for that purpose. We also offer to randomly monitor the property and work with the Sheriff’s dept. or Fire dept. if new problems develop, as well as offer referrals for trash clean-up in the event they are unable to do the clean-up themselves. If the property owner is unresponsive, Sonoma County Environmental Health can be contacted at 707-565-6565 or eh@sonoma-county.org.
Per Chief Steve Baxman of the Monte Rio Fire dept., if a fire hazard is identified, the best thing to do first is to contact your local Fire dept. From Forestville to Guerneville, Chief Max Ming should be contacted at 707-887-2212 or chief5100@forestvillefire.org. For Monte Rio to Guerneville, Chief Steve Baxman should be contacted at 707-484-2320. We also have a Cal FIRE station in Hilton between Rio Nido and Forestville, and they have the ability to do safety inspections and/or write citations holding owners responsible for hazardous situations, however per Chief Baxman, the best course of action is to contact your local fire dept. first.
If you would like to learn more about the Lower River Area Community Alliances, become involved as a volunteer, or if you have some community concerns or solutions you would like to share, you can “like” our Guerneville Community Alliance and/or Russian River Alliance (Monte Rio) FB pages. You can also contact Mark Emmett at 707-529-0534 (Guerneville) or Chuck Ramsey at 707-239-1639 (Monte Rio).
