LEWES, Del. - Governor John Carney signed House Bill 200, the Clean Water for Delaware Act, on Thursday, creating a Clean Water Trust to protect Delaware waterways and rebuild Delaware's drinking water infrastructure. The new law focuses on underserved communities, like the Donovan Smith Mobile Home Park in Lewes.
"We're just putting $50 million down and we're going to get $30 million from the feds," says bill sponsor House Majority Leader Valerie Longhurst.
DNREC Secretary Shawn Garvin referred to the Donovan Smith community as the pilot project to House Bill 200.
"This is providing the funding to allow us to make those investments so that the residents don't have to choose over having a roof over their head and having clean water and clean drinking water," Garvin says.
DNREC issued a notice of violations to the Donovan Smith community on July 8th. Secretary Garvin says the property owner is required to pump out the septic system and keep a fence with signs around sewage on the ground. The smelly odor the sewage puts off is still in the air, especially when the wind blows and the people who live there aren't convinced that anything is changing.
"Our tank was sinking and now it's sunk at least another foot," says Lynn Hoepfl.
Sussex County Councilman Mark Schaeffer questions the slow process.
"This property owner owns a number of facilities in Sussex County, all of which have these same types of problems and DNREC just is not doing anything about it," Schaeffer says. "They're letting people drink raw sewage."
Donovan Smith is one of the six properties KDM Acquisitions has in Delaware and Garvin says HB 200 can help them all if the property owner agrees. "We still have other legal authorities that we can utilize next to try to encourage that," Garvin says. "The balance that we continue to try to make sure doesn't happen is that the property owners, either Donovan Smith or any others say we're just going to close." The Lewes Board of Public Works says they have $5 million available to replace the sewer system in the Donovan Smith community, but that the property owner has been the holdup so far. WRDE reached out to the property owner's office in New York and did not hear back.