State regulators want a judge to make Lindrick Service Corp. correct disputed violations.
By PHIL DAVIS
Published August 30, 2005
HOLIDAY - The battle between state regulators and the private water utility Lindrick Service Corp. is officially headed to court.
Since May, the state Department of Environmental Protection and Lindrick have been debating a series of possible violations ranging from illegal well connections to failure to notify customers when to boil water. On Friday, the agency sent a letter to Lindrick owner Joe Borda saying it had "no option except to take enforcement action" in civil court.
"We're deadlocked," DEP spokeswoman Pamala Vazquez said. "Lindrick has not given us proposals that we feel are acceptable to the health of the environment and the health of the customers. We've listened. We've responded. It's time to move on to the next phase."
DEP lawyers will try to get a civil court judge to make Lindrick follow its orders, Vazquez said.
Borda said Monday he had not seen the letter, but he was not surprised the dispute is headed to court.
"What can I say?" Borda said. "We have an honest disagreement."
The issues:
--In May, inspectors found what the agency describes as two "unapproved" wells connected to the Lindrick system. The wells are too close to septic systems. DEP ordered Lindrick to disconnect the wells. Borda said he had DEP permission to connect the wells and that they are not supplying water to customers. He declined to remove the connections.
"We do not feel as if we should have to do that," Borda said. "We have a permit. The permit is in black and white."
--On June 29, DEP investigators say unpermitted work led to a major outage that cut off water service to all 3,500 households in the Gulf Harbors area of Holiday. Customers flooded politicians' offices with complaints that Lindrick failed to notify them about the work or the weeklong boil water advisory that resulted from the outage.
Borda has apologized for the outage and contends he had permits to do the work.
--Most recently, DEP inspectors said Lindrick failed to submit second-quarter water quality test results and "may have neglected to notify the public of a failure to monitor for nitrate," the letter said. The results were due July 10.
The letter says Borda's August proposal to settle the May and June violations is "unacceptable."
State Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, said he was pleased to learn the DEP was taking legal action. Fasano and state Rep. John Legg, R-Port Richey, have called for numerous state investigations of the privately owned utility's customer service practices.
"They've made it clear to him more than once and he keeps defying them," Fasano said of Borda. "Now it's coming back to haunt him."
