Mobile home park drinking uranium-laced water, utilities commission to step in

For months, residents of the Floating Feather Mobile Home Park on Horseshoe Bend Road near Eagle have been unable to receive water from their municipal provider, Eagle Water Co. As a result, they’ve been drinking from a uranium-contaminated well. Now state regulators have called for a Show Cause Hearing July 2 to find out why they can’t switch providers to Boise-based United Water Idaho.

“I don’t pretend to know all of the requirements or complexities necessary for the Eagle Water Co. to address their system deficiencies,” Floating Feather Partners representative Rich Felix wrote in a June 19 complaint to the Idaho Public Utilities Commission. “I do know that four months later, the company – while apparently working very hard – is no closer to providing water to the park. In the meantime, the residents, many of whom are lower income, have no viable option but to continue to use and drink the contaminated water from the well.”

The park, which consists of 74 mobile homes, is within Eagle Water Co.’s certificated service area, but the company (which is not affiliated with the City of Eagle Water) is unable to supply residents due to a Department of Environmental Quality consent order forbidding it from adding new connections until it improves its backup infrastructure. The commission is calling on Eagle Water to show whether it is capable of immediately serving the residents, or, if not, why Floating Feather shouldn’t be connected with United Water.

“Since February, we have waited while Eagle Water worked through various scenarios/plans to satisfy the DEQ’s requirements,” Felix continued in the complaint. “…Plans were updated it seems weekly, and for the past four months, we were always ‘a couple of weeks away’ from permission.”

It is against state law for utilities to offer services inside the certificated area of another regulated utility without commission approval, but in a June 24 notification the commission said it found adequate reason to expedite a solution to the problem.

Copies of the complaint, decision memorandum and notification are available on the utility commission’s Web site.

For more info, see these links:

• PDF of complaint

• Decision memorandum

• PDF of Notice