Dozens of lakefront Ray County property owners facing likely eviction
RICHMOND, Mo. — Some Ray County property owners will likely soon be facing eviction.
The property they purchased was never approved to be platted into individual lots. That land is along a lake without an approved septic system.
While residents believed they were living in what constitutes a subdivision, state and county leaders have weighed in and said it’s always only been approved as a primitive campground, though it may not have operated that way for decades.
Valerie Silkwood’s 280 square feet of paradise is a cabin along the lake.
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“We put a floor in it and he (her son) built me a bathroom I have a full shower, toilet sink,” Silkwood said.
She paid $11,000 for two lots of land along Ray County’s Sunshine Lake that now may be worthless.
“As soon as I got my disability backpay I sunk everything I had into that cabin because that was going to be my forever home and now I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she said.
That home and 70 other properties are in a flood plain with a whole host of other issues.
“They are going to try to condemn it, I don’t know how or why,” resident David Sweet said.
Missouri’s Department of Natural Resources says the land is filled with “repurposed 325-gallon hazardous waste totes, 55-gallon plastic drums, and possibly other repurposed containers, for the purpose of illicit domestic waste disposal,” in a 2021 unilateral order issued to the original property owner and developer.
The document states they issued notices of violations back in 2020 and told the developer to stop subdividing lots.
“We bought the property not knowing anything about that and we got the runaround the past two years and we haven’t even got any paperwork telling us what’s going on,” another resident Steve Legate stated.
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“Everybody is being run around on a bunch of stuff and nobody is being honest with nobody and I think we are all about tired of it,”
Ray County says they tried to come up with a septic solution and even offered to split the cost of a study with the developer.
“With the low income out there and this man not wanting to put money into to it to assist we couldn’t raise enough money to get the engineer,” Presiding Commissioner Billy Gaines said.
DNR’s most recent samples taken February showed trace samples of E. coli and ammonia. At a meeting with both permanent and weekend residents Friday, commissioners delivered the news the site will eventually return to a primitive campground and anyone living there will have to move. No date has been determined.
“We’re going to try to give you as much time as we can and enough notice,” Gaines told the crowd.
“It’s devastating, I’m 60 years old. I’m on disability,” said Silkwood, who lives in the home with her 17-year-old son who has Asperger’s Syndrome.
County commissioners advised residents to get a lawyer and pursue a class action lawsuit.
“Stand up and be a man and take responsibility for his actions,” Gaines said of the developer.
Silkwood wasn’t confident in the outcome.
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“We wouldn’t get a dime out of him anyway,” she lamented.
FOX4 called a phone number connected to the developer but hadn’t received a response by late Friday night.
