Septic leaks smelly saga

A saga underlies the stench at West Park Properties, an 11-acre mobile home park that can be found by smell after a good rain, when its failing septic system flushes into the nearby creek, water ducking under Northcrest Drive in Crescent City before flowing over marshland into the southeastern tip of Lake Earl.

Not 200 feet downstream from the stink sits an unused sewage lift station built by the county of Del Norte in 2011 to help resolve longstanding wastewater issues at this mobile home park and two others nearby.

Four years and $850,000 in state Community Development Block Grant money later, there sits the little lift station with nothing connected to it and something reeking to high heaven next door.

Living in manufactured homes warped by four unkind decades, West Parks tenantswere among those meant to benefit from the countys sewer line extension, built with state grants allocated to local governments to improve the lives of low and middle-income residents.

Yet these tenants could soon be up an unnamed creek without a paddle unless the parks owner agrees to pay $275,000 in fees to Crescent City and Del Norte County to complete connection to public sewers.

Meanwhile, the state agency that oversees mobile home parks as well as state water quality regulators are assessing the situation, and the county has taken steps to enforce an ordinance that requires property owners pay to join nearby public services in this case a county lift station that would pump to the citys wastewater treatment plant.

City fees

Excluding $48,600 payable to the county for use of its sewer lines, the citys capacity fee for West Parks 39 units would be $226,600, not including a monthly treatment fee of $1,260, to be passed on in bills to tenants of the park, where rent is $265 per month.

The citys fee is based on a 2008 analysis that reckoned future sewer rates with financing for $44 million in improvements to the wastewater treatment plant from 2007 to 2011, according to city Public Works Director Eric Wier.

The analysis concluded that in order for the city to break even on sewer service, new hookups should be billed at $9,700 per single family equivalency, such as a stand-alone house or a three-bedroom apartment. Each mobile home is valued at 60 percent of that metric, or $5,800.

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Septic leaks smelly saga