MUSKEGON CO., Mich. -- Contractor Steve Luke claims wastewater is being mishandled at the Maple Island Estates Mobile Home Park in Egelston Township.
"I feel bad for the people in the trailer park right now because there's a large contaminant here," Luke said.
He claimed, "There's raw sewage. Five-thousand gallons a day since June[is] being pumped behind these trailers."
But park owner Greg Asquith said that's not true. Asquith has already gotten in trouble with the law and charged for 'discharging a harmful substance' on the property. It's a felony, and he was sentenced to 6 months probation. He said he's now following a court order to no longer solely process the park's sewage on the property. Instead, he's ordered to connect the park's system to the county wastewater treatment plant next door.
Luke said he's been hired to help excavate and lay the pipeline.
"He told us there was a permit to dump raw sewage next door while this project was going on," Luke said.
Asquith said the water isn't raw sewage and that that was never the problem. He said the only problem is that some phosphates weren't getting removed from the water, which he said is out of line with federal standards.
In a phone interview with FOX 17, Asquith said, "The discharge is clean. It does not meet all of the EPA requirements. Therefore, we have spent several hundreds of thousands of dollars to install a new system to connect our facility there at Maple Island Estates to the county wastewater system."
Asquith said the new system is complete other than getting the final approval from the county wastewater facility and from the DEQ who was actually on site this morning, FOX 17 was told. The park owner said Luke is upset because he still owes him money for job. It's money that Asquith said he'll pay once the new pipeline is approved.
