In 1979, an engineer working for La Plata County reported that Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park’s sewage treatment lagoon was “needing replacement or abandonment.”
Now, 45 years later, the lagoon is nearing replacement, but it’s not there yet. It still discharges thousands of gallons of waste water – which historically has surpassed state limits for bacterial contaminants by exponential factors – into Lightner Creek daily.
The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, the agency responsible for permitting wastewater systems and protecting state waters, in early 2024 confirmed to The Durango Herald it would levy a penalty sometime that year against the park’s neglectful and financially embattled owner, Darlene Mann.
That never happened.
With a sale of the park now imminent, CDPHE officials are tight-lipped on when – or even whether – they intend to issue what they have calculated could be a seven-figure fine.
“Assessing a penalty against Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park, LLC is still a possibility,” CDPHE spokesman John Michael wrote in an email. “As we continue to determine what that penalty might be, we are balancing several factors, including ensuring any park owner can obtain compliance and reducing the risk that the park will close and the region will lose affordable housing.”
The agency declined to make someone available for an interview.
Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park, its residents and the waterway that shares its name have suffered a long history of tribulations under Mann’s ownership.
The park on Lightner Creek Road (County Road 207) is home to about 85 residents.
As far back as 1989, the year Mann bought the park, records show the wastewater lagoon did not comply with the discharge standards in its state-issued permit (which, engineers have previously said, are set impossibly low due to the fact that the creek has little water during the dry season).
As a requirement of her permit, Mann has been required to submit to CDPHE monthly monitoring reports that show the levels of bacteria such as E. coli and dissolved iron in the water released into Lightner Creek.
When Mann did submit those reports, contaminants often far exceeded her permit levels, at one point by as much as 110,000%.
Now, publicly available records show Mann has not submitted a discharge monitoring report in over 18 months, meaning the levels of contaminants flowing from the lagoon into Lightner Creek and the Animas River are unknown.
For years, CDPHE has threatened Mann with fines to try to cajole her into compliance. The agency’s Water Quality Control Division issued formal notices of violation in 2005, 2016, 2018 and, most recently, in November of 2023.
Through what observers say is an unfortunate combination of bad luck and mismanagement, Mann finds herself perpetually in dire financial straits. The state has shied away from handing down a financial penalty in an effort to avoid creating circumstances in which Mann’s only economically feasible option is to shut down the park.
“It’s kind of a balancing act,” CDPHE Clean Water Compliance and Enforcement Section Manager Kelly Morgan told the Herald in February 2024.
Mann did not respond to a request for comment.
Chris Hamilton, a Durango-based attorney and business owner, alongside his brother Eric, a Washington-based mechanical engineer, have for several years expressed interest in saving the park by buying it from Mann.
When park tenants were forced to go without running water for two months after the water system terminally malfunctioned in early 2023, the Hamiltons ultimately bailed Mann out by taking over control of the park and fixing the water system themselves.
Mann at that time defied the state’s order to deliver sufficient potable water citing financial hardship, and the state brought her to court to enforce the order.
Eric Hamilton said CDPHE regulators have approved a long-awaited variance in regulations to allow the brothers to install an effective wastewater treatment system.
That means the brothers are likely to proceed with their purchase of the park and hope to have a new sewage treatment system that meets the state’s revised effluent limits by next summer.
State regulators have repeatedly expressed support for the Hamiltons’ takeover of the park, and seem to be focused on ensuring their success, perhaps because they recognize that the best chance of improving water quality in the immediate future is likely through assisting the Hamiltons, rather than penalizing Mann.
“The division is encouraged by the actions of the prospective buyer,” CDPHE spokesman Michael wrote, adding in another email, “The division believes that the most viable path toward compliance, and ultimately environmental and public health protection, lies with a new owner.”
Any fines the state issues would target Mann’s limited liability corporation, and not the park’s likely future owners.
In October, with a sale not imminently on the line, a different CDPHE spokesperson told the Herald, “We are committed to holding Lightner Creek Mobile Home Park, LLC accountable and will pursue fines when appropriate.”
“They have not given up on recovering fines from Darlene Mann,” Eric Hamilton said.
rschafir@durangoherald.com
