Watch VideoLife without running water
Story By: Nicole Vandeputte
Source: KOAA
Published Mon Nov 17, 2008, 05:24 PM MST
Updated Mon Nov 17, 2008, 06:26 PM MST
It's been almost 2 weeks since we told you about a mobile home park in Florence without water. It was shut-off to the families living there, after the owner of the land stopped paying the water bill.
Many of the families have since left, but the ones who haven't are disabled, and say they have nowhere else to go. In one of Your Stories, we went back there to see what it's like for those families living without water.
Candice Bolin lives in the Shady Lane Mobile Home Park. Standing in her kitchen, she tears up, "I think it's terrible that people can treat disabled people this way."
Bolin suffers from heart disease, and diabetes. She's also been living without running water for two weeks. She boils large pots of water for baths, and dishes. She says it takes several hours.
Piled in her kitchen, are jugs, coolers, anything she can find to fill with water. Almost every day she fills them at her son's house. She needs the water for cooking, cleaning, baths, even the toilet. She says, "It's depressing, very depressing."
Just around the corner, Walter Dixon loves a cup of coffee in the morning. With no water, that's become a luxury. He has 4 children, and a wife with severe diabetes. They fill jugs every day, and if there's any left, he gets some coffee.
These families own their homes in the Shady Lane Mobile Home Park, but they don't own the land. That's owned by a man in Parker. He stopped paying the water bill, and his land's in foreclosure.
Outside his mobile home, Dixon points out all the vacant mobile homes. He says a lot of his neighbors left, but he can't afford too, "I can't get rid of mine, because I can't afford to go get another one."
5 Families are still left at Shady Lane. They spend their days filling jugs of water, because they say they have no other choice.
News First told the Florence City Manager about the conditions these families are living in. He told us they would discuss a way to try and help these families.
If nothing is done, the land at Shady Lane Mobile Home Park goes up for action in January. That means these families could go that long without running water.
