"This place is an invitation to rats, flies and dogs," Michael Menschke said during a visit to Grandview Mobile Home Park, which, with the exception of a caretaker, has been abandoned for months. "If there's a place to catch rain, it could become a breeding ground for mosquitoes.

"The magnitude of filth here is unquestionable, and the effort to get it cleaned up hasn't been robust," Menschke said. "I'll be sending a report to the health district board of directors within 24 hours."

Shells of mobile homes - broken windows, missing doors and siding gone in some cases - are surrounded by old cars and automotive parts. In the heaps of debris are bicycles, lumber, computer parts, molding furniture, tin cans, tires and kitchen refuse. On the end of one single-wide someone spray-painted "For Rent."

As Menschke made his walk-through, a black cat appeared, then disappeared into a pile of debris.

Mary Torres, the conservator for Archuleta Family Properties, which owns the park, said the property is being cleaned up in anticipation of creating a commercial center. The 5 or 6 acres contain a Sonoco gasoline station, a coffee shop/deli and an inhabited eight-unit apartment complex as well as the mobile-home park.

"I'm on it," Torres said Tuesday by telephone from her office in Bloomfield, N.M. "I've had someone out there cleaning up, and we have Waste Management on line to remove the units at $500 per. I know there have been problems, but we've had snow until a couple of weeks ago. We need a little time, a little patience."

In fact, Robert Shelton, who's been acting as caretaker, said he was on his way for equipment to remove debris and the mobile homes abandoned by tenants who couldn't find another park to accept their aging units.

Grandview Mobile Home Park sits across U.S. Highway 160 from Mercy Regional Medical Center. La Plata County sheriff's deputies posted eviction notices there in September, more than a year after tenants were told to be out by April 1, 2007, a deadline that was extended to June 15, 2007.

A facelift can't come too soon for neighbors of the mobile- home park.

"It's always been bad, very bad," said Laverne Turnbull, whose Vernie's Day Care to the south is separated from one of the abandoned units by a 6-foot rabbit-hutch-wire fence. She installed the fence after a naked man appeared several times in the neighboring unit.

Turnbull also recalled watching from her rear window four years ago when sheriff's deputies used a Taser to subdue a man behind her shed. The man had abandoned his vehicle in the mobile-home park and fled after he tried to a evade deputies at speeds reaching 100 mph.

"There was always loud music, fighting and meth dealing," said Turnbull, who's cared for children there for 19 years. "It's people like that who give the name 'trailer trash' to anyone who lives in a mobile-home park."

Frank Fredrickson with Can-yon Rim Construction, who lives in a trailer while he builds a new home about a block away, said neighbors have been concerned about the park for months.

"It's unsightly and unsanitary," Fredrickson said. "As the weather warms, the refuse is going to attract flies and vermin."

The problem, Menschke said, is that the San Juan Basin Health Department, which covers La Plata and Archuleta counties, doesn't have hard and fast regulations on environmental issues.

"We don't have the power to write a ticket because our environmental regulations aren't black and white like in other places," Menschke said. "We can get involved when there's a threat to public health such as a communicable disease."

Butch Knowlton, director of the La Plata County Office of Emergency Management, said the county is strapped by the same lack of ironclad regulations.

The Grandview Mobile Home Park "has been a problem for several years," Knowlton said. "Upkeep was poor, but La Plata County doesn't have specific regulations to address these conditions."

The county relies on state laws - which it has used on occasions in the past - in such situations, Knowlton said. County attorneys are consulting the state about regulations that could apply to the current matter, he said.

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