No E. coli link found at mobile home park

CLEVELAND, Tenn. — Exhaustive studies have found no link between Peachtree Pointe Mobile Home Park and E. coli levels in Wilkerson Branch, the Cleveland Utilities Board learned Tuesday.

Residents in a nearby subdivision, Royal Oaks, have claimed differently for years.

“That doesn’t mean we won’t develop new information otherwise tomorrow,” Cleveland Utilities general manager Tom Wheeler told the board.

“We’ve looked at that collection system about every way you can look at it,” Wheeler said. “We’ve performed smoke tests. We’ve performed dye tests. We’ve put TV cameras through the pipes themselves. We have drained the wet well in the pump station and inspected that.”

At one point in the past few days, a utility employee put on waders and walked the creek, looking for illegal pipes that some subdivision residents say are dumping into the water, Wheeler said. None were found, he said.

The mobile home park has its own collection and pump system that connects to the city system.

Royal Oaks residents have appealed to the Bradley County Commission and the Cleveland Utilities Board to test the water and find the E. coli source.

This summer, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a notice of violation of water pollution regulations to the California man who owns the Peachtree Pointe property.

Among other issues, Dr. Richard Urban, head of the department’s water pollution office in Chattanooga, told the county commission two months ago that E. coli levels are too high in the north Bradley County creek. He recommended that Peachtree Pointe’s pump station be taken over by Cleveland Utilities.

Whether the utility will take over the Peachtree Pointe collection system has not been decided.

Peachtree Pointe owner Jerry Jacobson has been cooperative, according to Cleveland Utilities, and has done his own routine testing of the creek as directed by TDEC.

Cleveland Utilities turned over its data, plus the results of the department’s testing and testing from a company hired by Jacobson, to an independent consultant, J.R. Wauford & Co.

In a letter received Tuesday, Kevin Young, senior vice president for J.R. Wauford, said E. coli concentrations in the reports “are within the ranges that are reported to be typical in urban streams.”

Young referred to a Vanderbilt University study of urban streams in the Nashville area, showing that E. coli concentration correlates to the density of nearby housing.

No one questions that Wilkerson Branch is impaired, said Craig Mullinax, water division manager for Cleveland Utilities. But there seem to be many sources of the pollution, including septic tanks from residential areas and farming operations along the creek.