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Committee advances bill to let CDPHE require fixes for brown, odorous water in mobile home parks
Summary
House Bill 11 45 clarifies that 'welfare' problems (taste, odor, color, mineral damage) can trigger remediation in mobile home parks, allows CDPHE to enforce resident notice without a complaint and clarifies penalty accrual; sponsors and CDPHE said the bill fixes implementation gaps from 2023; committee advanced the bill 10–3 after adopting an amendment.
Representatives Phillips and Velasco told the Transportation & Local Government Committee that House Bill 11 45 is a technical but consequential fix to the Mobile Home Park Water Quality Act that will allow the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to require remediation when water quality "risks resident welfare" — for example when tap water is brown, foul smelling, or so mineralized that it damages appliances.
"We want to make sure people that live in the mobile home community are able to drink water just like you and I drink, which is not brown and doesn't have a bad odor," Representative Phillips said, noting concentrations of mobile homes in her district and long‑running complaints about taste, odor and discoloration.
Nicole Rowan, director of CDPHE’s Water Quality Control Division, said the agency has tested 355 parks to date and identified 49 parks where water quality poses a risk to residents’ welfare because of high total dissolved solids, hardness, sulfate and manganese or distribution‑system problems. Rowan said the 2023 law authorized testing for welfare issues but did not clearly give CDPHE authority to require remediation for those welfare findings; HB 11 45 aligns the statutory definitions to fix that implementation gap.
Testimony from residents, legal advocates and community organizations described repeated incidents of brown or metallic‑smelling water, rashes and appliances ruined by hard water. Several witnesses said residents fear retaliation from park owners and that the complaint process can be inaccessible. Industry witnesses — including the Rocky Mountain Home Association and the Colorado Manufactured Housing Coalition — asked for more objective, measurable standards for the "risk to welfare" definition or additional time to prepare resident notices and translations.
Sponsors said the amendment adopted in committee refines the "risk to welfare" language to "reasonable likelihood of negatively affecting the ability of individuals to meet basic material needs," balancing CDPHE's screening tools and stakeholders' requests for clarity. The amendment passed with no objection.
The committee then moved HB 11 45, as amended, to the Committee of the Whole with a favorable recommendation. The roll‑call tally was 10 yes, 3 no. Committee debate emphasized remediation and using available federal and state funding to help owners who seek to fix problems while protecting residents from bearing remediation costs.
Next steps: HB 11 45 goes to the Committee of the Whole; sponsors said further refinements remain possible as implementation issues and measurable standards are worked out.
