Rv Park Tenants Are Victims Of Sewer Fight County Will Shut Down Illegal Waste System, Oust Poor Residents From Homes Near Fish Lake
Steve Bagwell moved his family and his 1953 Safeway mobile home to Fish Lake in September to avoid the harsh mountain winter above Newport, Wash.
By the middle of next week, the Bagwells and two dozen other residents, many of them dirt-poor, will have to tow their rigs elsewhere.
Residents of Myers RV Park on the north shore of Fish Lake, about 13 miles southwest of downtown Spokane, are the victims of a 3-year-old fight over a renegade sewer system.
The fight ends at 4 p.m. Nov. 15, when the Spokane County Parks and Recreation Department shuts down the sewer system on the orders of the Spokane County Health District.
Residents without their own RV holding tanks and the money to dump them twice a week will be forced to move.
“I found a letter taped to the door telling me everyone had to leave,” said Bagwell, who has a wife and three children. “We may have to go back to the mountains.”
The primitive sewage system at Myers RV Park is leaking bacteria-rich effluent from a dammed-up ravine serving as a holding pond.
The system was built in 1968 by Tom “Tucker” Myers and his family, owners of nearby D.J.’s Restaurant and Lounge. County parks officials took over the sewer system in May 1991 in exchange for the northern beach and lake access.
“I wouldn’t even call it a system,” said David Swink, the district’s director of environmental health. “It has never been legal.”
For three years, the health district has ordered the parks department to overhaul the system, granting eight extensions along the way.
The extensions have come and gone without any solutions, however. Now, the financially strapped parks department is forced to shut the system down.
Parks and Recreation Manager Wyn Birkenthal refused to discuss the shutdown.
D.J.’s Restaurant and Lounge has its own septic system, but its overflow is tied to the illegal holding pond. If the restaurant is forced to shut down, Tom Myers said, he would refer the matter to his attorney.
“You can’t sue unless you’ve been damaged. I haven’t been damaged yet,” Myers said.
“They picked a hell of a time of the year to do this,” he added. “These are all poor people. I’m very concerned about these folks here, but what can you do?”
Some of the residents moved in a few weeks ago and said Myers never told them about the illegal sewer system and the haggling between the county agencies.
Donald Hart, the assistant manager and chef at D.J.’s, said the sewer shutdown will be devastating to the restaurant but even worse for the RV park tenants.
“It’s not the Sheraton or Hilton over there,” he said. “It’s a place to live. I worry about them.”
Swink, the regulator, said he sympathizes with the plight of the families but noted the RV park never received permits to hook up to the sewage system.
Fran Boxer, the county’s assistant chief administrative officer, admits the county had no business taking over maintenance of an illegal sewage system.
“From the very beginning it was a bad deal,” Boxer said.
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