A homeless woman rides past portable toilets set up on the Santa Ana River trail near Rampart and Orangewood in Anaheim, CA on Monday, May 15, 2017. (Photo by KEN STEINHARDT, Orange County Register/SCNG)

A homeless man walks back to his tent after using portable toilets that were installed on the Santa Ana River trail near Rampart and Orangewood in Anaheim, CA on Monday, May 15, 2017. (Photo by KEN STEINHARDT, Orange County Register/SCNG)

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The portable toilets that were installed on the Santa Ana River trail near Rampart and Orangewood in Anaheim, CA on Monday, May 15, 2017. (Photo by KEN STEINHARDT, Orange County Register/SCNG)



ANAHEIM — Homeless advocates installed three portable toilets this past weekend along the Santa Ana River bike trail south of Orangewood Avenue, action that county authorities said Monday, May 15, is unauthorized.

The three portable outhouses were purchased with $1,000 in donations and placed Saturday, May 13, next to a children’s park accessible from Rampart Street on the west side of the Santa Ana River.

“We’re going to continue raising money to service the portables,” said Mohammed Aly, a lawyer and activist who founded the Orange County Poverty Alleviation Coalition, a group involved in assisting homeless people at the river.

Hundreds of homeless people live in tents bordering the trail, north and south of Angel Stadium. There is no running water or restroom facility on the west bank. Access to county-maintained restrooms on the east bank at Katella Avenue is limited to daytime hours.

County public information officer Carrie Braun said Monday the process to obtain what is known as an encroachment permit was not followed to install the portable toilets. Getting a permit would require proof of insurance with liability coverage of at least $1 million, she said.

“It’s an unauthorized use,” Braun said. “So we will do what we would do in any situation like this – contact the vendor or person who placed them there and request that they comply.”

The county’s OC Parks department maintains the bike trail. OC Public Works, under a court injunction over a lawsuit filed in February, picks up bagged trash deposited in designated areas near the tent encampments. Public Works staff will do their best to contact the people that placed the portable toilets at the site, Braun said.

“If there’s no response within the next day or two, then they will be removed.”

She added: “We will be reasonable. If they are willing to work with us and go through the permit process. This isn’t something that happens regularly – we don’t have restrooms dropped regularly on the flood control channel.”

In recent months, the homeless and their supporters have stepped up calls for the county to provide running water and accessible toilets near the tent encampments.

At midday Monday, the seats in two of the portables — pink-colored units manufactured by a Las Vegas company called PortaJane — were splashed with fecal matter. The third unit was cleaner and a young man stepped inside to use it.

Aly said there is a company willing to pump the sewage from the portables and keep them clean and stocked with toilet paper at a cost of $10 per unit, per visit. The portable toilets, two with sinks that were not hooked up to a water source, were purchased secondhand.

Homeless advocates held their own ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday afternoon at the location, celebrating the arrival of the outhouses.

Toby Stockham, a homeless man who shares a tent a short walk south of Orangewood Avenue with his wife, said that he spoke at the little ceremony and asked those who use the facilities to help keep them clean and watch out for anyone vandalizing or misusing them.

He said Monday it is a relief not having to rely on five-gallon paint buckets that many of the homeless people resort to using, dumping their waste in the river bed or disposing of it in the orange trash bags that public works supplies. Others trek to the Burger King and Jack-in-the-Box restaurants on Chapman Avenue.

He said people living in the tents will police the toilets themselves.

“If anything is happening in any of these, like shooting up or graffiti, then we’ll give them a warning,” said Stockham, 47, who is a member of the Santa Ana Riverbed Roundtable, a grassroots group formed so the homeless could self organize to affect public policy.

“If we catch them we’ll tell them, ‘Hey, don’t be doing that.’ We just got these the other day, treat them with respect.”