Story originally printed in the La Crosse Tribune or online at www.lacrossetribune.com
Published - Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Golden Valley residents impatient for a new well
 Golden Valley Mobile Home Park, with the new Wellhouse on the far right of photo. Dick Riniker photo |
For nine months, Deborah Kelly and her neighbors haven’t been able to drink their tap water due to contamination.
Kelly, who lives in Golden Valley Mobile Home Park in southern La Crosse County, said she’s frustrated with the park’s owners and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources over delays in getting a safe water source.
“We still don’t have safe water yet,” said Kelly, who has helped start a tenants association to deal with the water and park maintenance issues.
Park and DNR officials say clean water is on the way by June 1, and tenants don’t understand how much time it takes to put in a new well.
Golden Valley Mobile Home Park sits at the foot of Ten Mile Hill in the town of Greenfield, at W4266 Hwy. M. The park, which has fewer than 50 lots, is owned by Arlene Schmidt and managed by Pinewood Properties of Hayward, Wis. Pinewood is purchasing the park, according to county officials.
“I don’t know what their problem is,” Schmidt said Monday of the unhappy tenants. “They’re not the friendliest people.”
“They effectively don’t have water,” said La Crosse County Supervisor Maureen Freedland, who has taken an interest in the tenants’ problems. “It seems unlivable to me. I’m unhappy the tenants’ concerns seem to be downplayed.”
Since 1980, Golden Valley’s water has come from a well right next to a creek. According to a DNR inspection database of tests since 1990, coliform bacteria has been found in 29 out of about 190 tests. Before 2007, the last problem was in 1999.
Golden Valley’s current water problems started last summer, when a series of tests for coliform bacteria came back with unsafe levels, William Roberts, a DNR employee who monitors the water system, said Monday.
Chlorination fixed the problem, but it resurfaced after August flooding. Three separate disinfections didn’t work, and by late October the DNR ordered Golden Valley to put in a new, deeper well.
Roberts notified residents to boil their water, and park managers started delivering bottled water to residents.
Kelly said residents were told not to wash dishes in tap water and not to get water in their mouths when they showered.
Roberts said tenants don’t understand the DNR’s review process is intended to avoid having these kinds of problems happen again. “I think the residents wanted it to move, move, move, but it doesn’t happen that way,” he said.
Adam Bodenschatz of Pinewood Properties expressed similar concerns Friday that tenants don’t “understand the process and how long it takes, and the hoops we had to jump through to get this” well sited, drilled and operating.
He said the new well is a big investment that he and his father, Steve Bodenshatz, didn’t plan on when they agreed to buy the park last summer.
Kelly said residents are frustrated. “Of course they had to fill out paperwork, but they dragged their feet, way beyond reason. It’s like living in a Third World country,” she said.
Schmidt said she tried running the park in the years since the 2005 death of her husband, Norbert Schmidt.
Asked about tenants’ complaints of neglected maintenance over the years, Schmidt acknowledges the trees should have been trimmed.
In January 2007, Schmidt pleaded no contest after La Crosse County zoning officials cited her for operating an unauthorized junkyard in the park because tenants had many unlicensed and inoperable cars and other refuse. She paid a $249 forfeiture.
County zoning and health officials were back at the park in early April, and an inspection found junk cars, old tires and other junk on nine lots.
On a return inspection last week, code enforcement officer Chad VandenLangenberg found continued problems, but said he decided to grant an extension of four to six weeks because he’s “impressed with the new owners” and they “seem very interested in cleaning it up.”
Kelly isn’t as optimistic, saying that if tenants were wealthy, the county and the DNR “would never have allowed this human rights travesty to continue for as long as it has.”
Reid Magney can be reached at (608) 791-8211 or rmagney@lacrossetribune.com.
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