Nearly a month has passed since the water stopped running at Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park on Feb. 13. With each passing week, the situation has continued to devolve as the park’s owner, Darlene Mann, finds herself facing mounting legal trouble.
But as of Friday evening, Mann is no longer in control. She signed an agreement leasing the property on a month-to-month basis to Chris Hamilton, a Durango attorney who has been under contract to buy the park for over a year and a half. Hamilton will take control of the park effective April 1.
Although Mann has been pressured by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for years to address the park’s inadequate wastewater treatment system, the situation reached a crisis last month. Within days of each other, the park’s sewage system backed up, spilling untreated waste on the ground and the well ran dry. Contractors concluded there was a leak somewhere in the water system.
After Mann failed to comply with a Feb. 15 cease-and-desist order issued by the Department of Local Affairs enforcing the Mobile Home Park Act, the state took her to court. On Feb. 28, a judge ordered that Mann provide 20 gallons of potable water to each resident per day, clean up the spilled sewage and deliver more portable toilets. On March 8, the state filed a motion requesting that Mann be held in contempt for failing to abide by that order. She will have to explain her actions in court on Tuesday.
For Mann, the agreement with Hamilton could be a desperately needed escape valve.
Hamilton has already paid $8,000 owed to DAK Drilling and Well Service, the contractor that had been working to restore water service. DAK walked off the job last week for lack of payment, Hamilton said. He also spent $2,200 to bring in more portable toilets, something Mann had failed to do despite a court order compelling her to provide 10 more toilets by March 10.
Hamilton’s purchase of the park is contingent upon CDPHE accepting a proposal for a new wastewater treatment system – something that may not even be feasible, given the strict effluent discharge standards for waterways that run dry seasonally, as does Lightner Creek. A spokesperson for CDPHE said it would likely be late summer before the agency issues a finding on the matter.
However, Hamilton is seizing control now to prevent an all-out collapse.
“Darlene claims, and may be right, that she doesn't have the money to save the park, to fix the water,” Hamilton said. “If the water doesn't get fixed, the park will implode and have to close down and that will be the end of it for everybody there. They don't deserve that, they're innocent people. And no one else is going to do it.”
Legal protections enacted in recent years have helped protect mobile home park residents from scheming developers who may buy the properties underneath mobile homes that residents own but cannot afford to move. Hamilton has previously said he has no such desire. He hopes to clean up the park and maintain it as a haven of (relatively) affordable housing.
Going forward, rent for individual lots will be reduced from $700 to $650 per month for the next four months.
“We need to do our part before we charge full rent,” Hamilton said.
Under the terms of the lease, Mann is still responsible for repaying Hamilton for any expenditures related to the water and sewage issues. She owns seven of the parks roughly 35 mobile homes and will sublease those properties back from Hamilton and continue to charge her tenants rent. Hamilton said he is not confident that he will recoup the money he pours into this.
Hamilton does have the obligation to make “good faith efforts to collect past due rents” taking into account costs incurred by residents in relation to the water problems.
Some residents have expressed resistance to any attempt to collect rent for the last month given Mann’s failure to comply with state law and provide basic necessities such as toilets and potable water. Hamilton sympathized with that perspective, noting tenants would have a strong argument in favor of a rent abatement for March were they to oppose any effort to collect rent.
Now that the contractors have received payment and returned to work, Hamilton hopes to have the water system operational for at least some residents by the end of the week.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
