COUPLE BATTLES
COUNTY
By John Henderer , The Chronicle, 2/13/99
ETHEL - Charlene and Jose Soto are calling "Hard Copy" and looking for a better lawyer.
The couple filed a $2 million claim against Lewis County last year over failed septic system, blaming it on the government.
Monday, the Sotos moved out of their Ethel home.
The county condemned it last year. Charlene Soto said it will be boarded up soon.
In a Nov. 25 letter, the county warned the Sotos to vacate the premises "immediately due to public health hazard."
Their $15,000 alternative septic system failed to treat the sewage, and fecal coliform bacteria had reached dangerous levels.
NINE MONTHS AFTER they began living in their new home, the Sotos learned they had E. coli bacteria contamination in their well water, Charlene Soto said.
"We were drinking it," she said.
Alarms from the septic system would sound when it became overloaded. Tests later showed ground water was flowing into it.
Soto said her "dream home" became their "dream nightmare."
The couple spent $112,000 for 5 acres, a 1,400-square-foot mobile home and septic system. Groundwater contamination plunged the value to just $15,850 this year, according to the Lewis County Assessor's Office.
"A real estate man told me, 'Sitting on that property it ain't worth a cent,"' Charlene Soto said of her mobile home.
THIS SUMMER, the property will be sold at auction. After that, the mortgage company will sue the couple for the difference, Soto said she has been told.
The Sotos moved to Lewis County from San Diego after Jose Soto retired from the U.S. Navy.
Charlene opened Char's Diner at Ethel, and Jose began working at Centralia College as a custodian.
They lost the diner.
"My customers got tired of hearing about this stuff," Charlene Soto said. "They say, 'How do we know you're not carrying disease? You're living in sewage."'
She would not allow her grandchildren to visit the house because of the contamination.
"They cry so I got to go spend the night at their house," she said.
LEWIS COUNTY environmental officials originally denied the Sotos' request to place a sand-filter mound treatment system on the property. The Sotos appealed to the county commissioners, who make up the county Board of Health, and won approval for a Glendon Biofilter, an alternative system.
The Sotos blame the county for recommending the Glendon.
Mike Vinatieri, former county environmental services manager, denied petitioning for the Glendon and said the state only had recently approved its use.
HE BLAMES THE FAILURE on Vancouver, Wash., engineer Jim Nims, who performed hydraulic tests on the machine.
"That system didn't die, it was assassinated," Vinatieri said. "He blew the system out of the ground. He put four or five times the design capacity of water through that system."
The Sotos said tests had shown it failed before Nims' experiment.
Lewis County officials declined comment because of the pending claim.
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