Homeless camps, two tons of garbage cleared from Sonoma's Montini Preserve

Workers and volunteers who cleared more than 4,000 pounds of garbage from homeless encampments on the Overlook Trail and Montini Open Space Preserve hope the oak-studded hillside that serves as Sonoma’s backdrop will recover from the damage inflicted by illegal camps.

Deputies and community service officers are patrolling the nature preserve on foot at least once a week, looking for signs the homeless people who long camped on the public lands have returned.

The patrols follow the dismantling late last month of five camps by Sonoma public works employees, with the help of the police department and Sonoma Ecology Center, said Chris Pegg, the city’s stormwater compliance specialist. With a cleanup crew of about a dozen people, they hauled off garbage including an old twin-sized mattress, a 5-gallon propane tank, a grocery pallet, a chaise lounge and human waste.

“We filled a medium dump truck twice and another small truck,” said Pegg, who last week combed through the former encampments.

“There’s no one here,” he said. “That’s good news. There’s no more garbage.”

Aside from a few liquor and soda bottles, bicycle parts, a distributor cap and a tetherball pole, little evidence remained of the encampments late last week.

At a camp site just west of Norrbom Road, branches appeared to have been broken to create a thick curtain to conceal it from passers-by. The cleanup crew found at that site a cast-iron woodstove set up on a wood slab wedged between a large rock and tree. Nearby, the ground had been carved out to create a brick stove. Tin cans were stacked high, serving as a chimney.

“It definitely went unnoticed for a long, long time,” said Pegg about the camp, a half-mile north of the town’s historic plaza and a stone’s throw from the police department and the Haven homeless shelter.

The largest find was up the road a few feet west of the Overlook Trail. The crew hauled about one ton, or 2,000 pounds, of garbage from that site alone, said Pegg. Most of it was mounds of food wrappers and beverage containers.

“There was garbage everywhere,” he said.

Mark Newhouser, the ecology center’s restoration program manager, said the encampments likely have been around for at least five years. While their environmental impact isn’t “completely clear,” he said it’s evident that they’ve resulted in the loss of wildlife habitat. Vegetation was removed and soil disturbed in and around the camps, which also could degrade water quality because of sediment runoff, he said.

“Trash and garbage were strewn about and some waste was buried in shallow pits on site,” said Newhouser in an email. “Fryer Creek is below (the) camps, so polluted runoff could contaminate the creek and adversely affect fish and wildlife.”

He said one of the center’s patrol members notified police about the camps.

Pegg said homeless people had built trails to the campsites and carved out hillsides to create places to sleep. Not only does that disturb the vegetation, he said it also causes erosion.

Pegg said the fire hazards posed by the propane tank and fire pits were also major concerns for the preserve, which borders the Field of Dreams park facility and the historic home of Gen. Mariano Vallejo, who founded Sonoma in 1835.

“When vegetation dries out, there’s a real risk of having a fire,” said Pegg.

Deputies and community service officers now patrol the nature preserve on foot at least once a week, looking for any signs of homeless encampments, said Sgt. Jason Craver of the Sonoma Police Department, which is run by the county Sheriff’s Office. The city prohibits camping in the parks, he said.

“We’re trying to keep it from becoming an ongoing issue,” he said, referring to the encampments.

About a half-dozen individuals had been staying at the preserve, Craver said. They were all given a week notice to clear out before the city, ecology center, deputies and community service officers returned to clean up the sites on Feb. 24, he said.

He said police learned about the camps after a preserve docent spotted some pit bulls roaming around - dogs aren’t allowed on Montini Preserve. That led them to the camps, Craver said.

Kathy King, executive director of Sonoma Overnight Support, which runs the Haven, the only shelter in town, said the mostly older men who had been living there likely set up camp along the Sonoma Creek, where city workers went out last year to clean up encampments. With the lack of affordable housing in town, she said it’s only a matter of time before homeless people return to the 98-acre Montini Preserve, which the city took over in late 2014 from the Sonoma County Open Space District.

“They’re just going to wait and go back,” said King.

The Haven, located near the police station, only has 12 beds, which is not enough with an estimated 200 to 300 homeless people in the Sonoma Valley, said King. Last year, 340 individuals sought services at the drop-in center located at the shelter, she said.

Some of them were staying in the camps at the preserve, King added. While she understand the importance of clearing out the encampments, she said they’ll continue to pose a problem for the city until the housing crisis is solved.

“They are Sonomanites,” she about the campers. “They’re from here. Their families are from here. They want to stay here.”

You can reach Staff Writer Eloísa Ruano González at 521-5458 or eloisa.gonzalez@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @eloisanews.