Mobile home park goes without water for a week after leak

Read the full article at vtcng.com. Below is an excerpt.

A Hinesburg mobile home park went without running water for a week earlier this month while its management company tried to fix a leak in one of the park’s water pipes.

Sunset Lake, off Richmond Road, is a resident-owned cooperative with 55 individual homes. Residents there collectively own the park and govern themselves through a co-op board. The board also contracts with Majestic Property Management to run day-to-day operations. While Sunset Lake is connected to the town water supply, the co-op owns and is responsible for the pipes on their own property.

On Tuesday, Mar. 4, the Hinesburg Water Department informed the co-op board and the management company that an excessive amount of water was entering the park, indicating that there might be a leak somewhere on the property.

According to Majestic Property Management owner Bob Lake — who, along with another employee, also oversees four other cooperative mobile home parks in the state — the amount of water entering the park from the town main was about twice the amount expected for the number of people living there. In response, a member of the co-op board asked the town to turn off the water to the park while they tried to locate and repair the leak.

On March 4, the management company emailed residents, letting them know contractors would be working on the break that day and they might need to turn of the water.

“The Town of Hinesburg has turned the water off as there is a broken pipe that we are trying to locate and we are working with a company that finds leaks, an excavator and the Town to try and locate the broken pipe,” a follow-up email read.

However, fire chief Prescott Nadeau and town manager Todd Odit both said they did not know about the situation at Sunset Lake until March 6, two days later. Nadeau learned about the water issue at a school safety meeting with Champlain Valley School District leaders.

“That was really fortuitous, because I was unaware of any water problem at all, until (Hinesburg Community School and Champlain Valley Union) said, ‘Prescott, what do you know about this? We have a lot of students that are affected,’” he said.

At that point, the residents had been without a source of water for at least 48 hours. Nadeau immediately called Odit and started working on an emergency plan.

By the evening of March 6, town leaders had coordinated with CVU to allow Sunset Lake residents into the building to take showers and access drinking water.