Chronic problems with the septic system at Lakeside Mobile Home Park —including pools of raw sewage on the roads and leaking lagoons — will be fixed by state-ordered deadlines, the park’s new owner promised Wednesday.

Six weeks after the mobile-home park was issued a notice of violation/ cease-and-desist order for repeated septic violations, Drew Cleland says he will be able to fix the unsanitary conditions that have plagued the site.

"Yes, we’re in the process (of complying with the requirements of the state order)," Cleland said Wednesday.

The park’s septic system reportedly had been discharging untreated sewage into a tributary to McElmo Creek since mid-March. An inspection Tuesday found the discharge had been stopped, however, according to Mitchell Periman, Montezuma County septic inspector.

"He’s not discharging on the surface at the present time, which is a change," Periman said.

That was the second time a discharge had occurred in that area at the park, which has about 53 homes.

In December, Periman and Greg Brand, district engineer with the state Water Quality Control Division, found that a plugged sewer line at the park had caused thousands of gallons of raw sewage to surface from a manhole onto the ground and discharge into the creek.

Samples taken Dec. 21 and 28 at the site where the sewage entered the tributary found fecal-coliform concentrations of 460,000 colonies per 100 milliliters, the order states. Two hundred colonies is considered the highest safe level.

The problem was temporarily corrected in early January, but recurred around mid-March, according to Brand.

"I think it was stopped for most of the winter," Cleland said. He said a portion of the line leading to the pump station is poorly designed and narrow, causing it to plug up frequently.

"I think it plugged up some time in December," he said. "They bypassed it — it was a temporary fix and it wasn’t doing real well.

"So what we’ve done is get the plumbers out to work on it." He said he also had had the contaminated area treated with chlorine and would do it again.

The Feb. 22 notice of violation/ cease-and-desist order was issued because of the December problems, which were not fixed promptly or thoroughly enough to satisfy the state, according to Brand.

In a Dec. 10 letter from Brand to Richard Norton, who was then the park’s owner, Brand listed a number of "required actions," including immediately ceasing illegal discharges, immediately fencing the contaminated area, and decontaminating the area by Dec. 17. Most of the deadlines were not met.

Septic problems at the park have worried county and state officials since at least 1997.

"It is the practice of the state health department to try to work with people that come under our jurisdiction, so we were trying to work with Mr. Norton for a long time — years," Brand said. "Basically, adding December — the things that happened with the sewage coming out of the manhole and onto the ground and discharging into the tributary, and the lack of attention by Mr. Norton — the health department felt we’d done everything we possibly could to try to solve this without going to the enforcement aspect."

One week after the cease-and-desist order, Norton and his limited-liability corporation sold the park to Cleland, his former business partner, and Cleland’s corporation, DLMT.

Cleland said that, at the time of the sale, he did not realize the severity of some of the problems.

"There were quite a few things I didn’t know," he said.

Among the actions the order required Norton to take were:

• Immediately stop the illegal discharge.

• Submit a site-approval application by May 31 for the complete wastewater-treatment system, which is larger than than its original permit allowed.

• Complete construction by Dec. 31 of a properly designed, approved wastewater-treatment system.

In a written response, Cleland said he had no direct knowledge of many of the problems or the park’s history. However, he said Wednesday he hopes to have the problems corrected even before the deadlines.

"We’re hoping to get it done a lot quicker than that," he said.

He also said he has implemented a regular maintenance schedule to keep the lines clean — "stuff that hadn’t been done before."

The latest problems, unlike some of the previous ones, have caused no problems for the park’s tenants, he said, other than general concern about whether the park might be shut down by authorities.