ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 28, 1996 TAG: 9602280046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-10 EDITION: METRO
PAUSE FOR a moment, if you will, to commiserate with D.J. Cooper, owner of a trailer park in Bedford County and victim of a heartless government bureaucracy.
The aggrieved Cooper, for 30 years or so, has managed to keep his 107-unit trailer park open despite what can only be described, in the climate of the current administration in Richmond, as the heavy-handed oppression of the state's regulatory zealots, whose single-minded purpose is to wring the financial life out of anyone found to be making more money than a civil-service drone.
What a struggle it has been. A court forced Cooper, at one point, to put in a new road to assuage neighbors' worries about access. And Health Department officials suggested he do something about the high levels of iron and manganese in the park's water system. The thugs.
Those high levels do make the water stink like rotten eggs in most of the mobile homes hooked up at Hardy Road Trailer Park - but just some of the time. Some days, it stinks like sewage. It stains clothes, dishes, bathroom fixtures. One resident, a real whiner, claims it gives her daughter a rash when she bathes. Most folks, though, just seem to smell like sulfur when they sweat on a hot day.
OK, these things may be nuisances. But the iron and manganese are not going to kill anybody. And what kind of American would not be satisfied simply having indoor, running water that won't cause illness or death if one should happen to swallow a mouthful while taking a shower? Especially if just keeping one's mouth shut will save money for the park owner, who can evict a tenant at any time?
Unfortunately, a bunch of bellyachers at the park got the ear of jackbooted Health Department officials who eventually turned a suggestion into an order that the long-suffering Cooper fix the water system. Cooper says the order was motivated by jealousy of his wealth, which sounds almost plausible when one considers how financially insecure state employees must feel, knowing their boss doesn't like them, and all.
The workers were probably inflamed by jealousy, too, when they agreed to drop a court-ordered fine and, in a raw display of tyranny, gave Cooper three years to fix the problem. And they likely are all but consumed with envy by now, when - after three years - Cooper has done nothing to remove the iron and manganese.
The county commonwealth's attorney is planning to pursue criminal charges. He's probably the jealous type, too.
To add to his burdens, Cooper now has to tangle with the Roanoke office of the Department of Environmental Quality to try to meet state and federal standards for discharge from a sewage lagoon into a nearby creek. DEQ is searching for a solution that won't be so costly as to prompt Cooper to shut down part of the trailer park, which provides low-cost housing. "We're very sensitive to his plight, and to the plight of his tenants."
Those are fighting words to Cooper, who will not be "bulldozed into some bureaucratic solution." So goes the war to get the government behemoth off the backs of little people.
LENGTH: Medium: 59 linesby CNB