By NATE KING and OLIVIA BERGMEIER
Salina Post
As Misty Livingston-Holmes, a 43-year-old resident of Sundowner West Meadows Mobile Home and Trailer Park, prepared for her morning on Friday, Jan. 12, she lifted her faucet handle, and nothing happened.
Even though the water didn’t flow, a new cascade began. Months of inconsistent billing, water pressure and communication finally spilled over with residents reporting no clean running water for more than a week.
Livingston-Holmes moved to Sundowner West when she was eight years old. She said the water pressure was never impressive, but that turned out to be the beginning of the decline in the community’s water quality.
“It's happened more times than I can count,” Livingston-Holmes said. “We’ve never had good water pressure. It’s been decent, and decent is putting it loosely.”
Low water pressure soon turned into faucets pouring black, sludgy liquid intermittently, which Livingston-Holmes said often smelled of strong chemicals or sewage.
These issues were just the latest from years of mismanagement, with many residents reporting water contaminants from as early as the 1990s, but many remember when Sundowner West was a safe haven from the fast city life.
A handful of residents grew up in the community, including Livingston-Holmes, who recalled her childhood as one of joy, playfulness and exploration. Today, her children experience dry skin, stinky water and regular disruptions in routine.
Sundowner community’s early days
One of the longest-standing residents, Galen Elliott and his wife, Bonnie Elliott, moved to Sundowner West Meadows in 1976, shortly after the owner, Frank Norton, opened mobile home lots on the Sundowner West Campgrounds.
According to Kerry Ingalsbe, another Sundowner West resident, Norton began developing the community after a tornado destroyed his other project twice — Sundowner East.
Norton then began developing Sundowner West and the land where Sundowner East once stood as a new development, Highland Meadows Hamlet, a multi-million dollar housing project.
Sundowner West began as a campground project, complete with a swimming pool, convenience store, pond and creek access, with almost 50 RV sites available to visitors.
Elliott said when he moved out there, he was one of the first homes on Rifle Road, with just a few others populating the neighborhood at the time.
“We could go down and fish whenever we wanted,” Elliott said. “The campground was right on the east side of the pond, they had a swimming pool up there. We’d go swimming up there whenever we wanted to, and right just north of where that swimming pool used to be was the clubhouse and a little store up there, so if you needed something, you didn’t have to run all the way to town.”
In 1989, Livingston-Holmes moved in and recalled when she would play with her cousins and other family living in the park, visiting the creek bed to catch turtles and other stream wildlife.
“It used to be fun out here,” Livingston-Holmes said. “I was telling my kids, ‘I feel so bad for you guys because when I lived out here, we had so much to do.’ we had a cool crick, we had a pool, the pond was so big you could put paddle boats out and fish.”
Kerry Ingalsbe moved to Sundowner West with his wife, Melina Ingalsbe, in 1993 and witnessed the park’s transformation from a peaceful community to one abandoned and wrought with strife.
While Sundowner West continued to gain residents, Norton continued both projects somewhat, leaving Sundowner West neglected by its owner.
“Sundowner East went from a mobile home park to lots with half a million to $1 million homes,” Kerry Ingalsbe said. “Once that development started, they forgot about us.”
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As Norton got older, less was done to maintain the community’s infrastructure and amenities. The pool was removed, and the RV campground, restaurant and convenience store closed.
The following paragraphs have been updated to reflect new information provided by individuals previously involved with Sundowner West.
According to Todd Michaelis, sometime between 2017 and 2019, Monte Shadwick, a Saline County Commissioner, acquired the easement rights and Michaelis would assist Shadwick until he moved to Lawrence in 2019.
“I think they [Shadwick] purchased that for free money,” Kerry Ingalsbe said. “I think they thought they were going to get free money, collecting money from poor people.”
Shadwick left shortly after Michaelis, but before leaving, Shadwick hired Scott Kolling to oversee the pumps and water utility infrastructure.
“That was when a lot of the problems began, was two years ago when Scott took over,” Livingston-Holmes said.
Under new management
In the summer of 2021, residents began to notice a change. Melina Ingelsbe said paying their water bill became a constant fight and headache, often ending in screaming matches.
“Our water got to be really bad, and we wouldn't get a bill for maybe eight months,” Melina Ingelsbe said. “Then he [Kolling] would send us a bill for hundreds of dollars and say, ‘If you don't pay me right now, I'm going to shut your water off.’”
Melina is not alone. Residents describe Kolling as explosive and a poor communicator when problems or issues arise.
Livingston-Holmes said she had a dispute with Kolling over a $599 water bill that arrived after months of little to no contact with Kolling. When she denied paying the bill, Kolling decided to take action, visiting Livingston-Holmes personally.
“I stood my ground,” Livingston-Holmes said. “He walked up my driveway, and he had a wrench in his hand because he was going to shut my meter off. He raised it like he was going to hit me.”
According to Livingston-Holmes, she said only a few words to Kolling after he raised the wrench above his head.
“I said [to him], ‘You better hope you get me on the first time,’” Livingston-Holmes said.
She wasn’t the only resident to have disputes with Kolling and his control of the water easement.
Peggy Young and her 10-year-old son moved to Sundowner West in May 2023, and before arriving at her new property, Young said she attempted to contact Kolling to set up billing and gather any relevant information about the property.
“He said, ‘Oh, no, just write a check and put it in the mailbox down the street.’ I said, ‘Okay, wait, I broke my leg. I cannot walk, and you want me to go down the street and write you a blank check?’ No, that's not how that works,” Young said.
Young, alongside other residents, claimed that Kolling is hardly on the property to assist when issues arise, leading to long response times and delayed action.
“Don't treat us like we're stupid because we're not,” Young said.
Many children live at Sundowner West, and with inconsistent water quality and pressure, many struggle to maintain a regular schedule alongside school or work activities. Young said her son is especially impacted since he lives with behavioral disabilities like autism, ODD, ADHD and DMDD, which all require a strict schedule for normalcy.
The consistent disruptions in the young child’s schedule cause confusion and frustration between him and Young, leading to a stressful situation worsening for the family.
“Anything change-wise is terrible for him,” Young said. “Right now is awful because I'm trying to explain to him why we're going over to his stepdad's house to take a shower every day — and that's disrupting his schedule.”
Kerry Ingelsbe told Salina Post he knows why people have black water.
“You could go to any house out here and get one of the three-quarter inch pipes, and you'd have a pencil that you could fit inside of the gunk that's stored up on the sides of those pipes. I’ve seen it myself,” Kerry Ingalsbe said.
These disruptions continue to affect many residents in the neighborhood, with Livingston-Holmes recording about 15 children still without reliable water to use in everyday life, now 11 days since water pressure and quality dropped for the entire neighborhood.
In the days that followed, Livingston-Holmes said Kolling distributed water, but only to those who complained to him about their water, not to everyone impacted.
Joe Hay, Saline County Commissioner of District 5, who represents the residents of Sundowner West, said the county offered to provide some funding to fix the water system to Kolling, but the paperwork never returned to county staff.
“According to Philip Smith-Hanes, Scott was offered up to $50,000 In ARPA funds to address this,” Hay said. “It was out there for him to take it — he only would have had to get the estimates, get to work, get the work done and could have had a check, cut, bang, it's over with.”
“I’m not sure if $50,000 would have taken care of that whole system, but I think it would have made it to the point where people probably wouldn’t have had to put up with this right now.”
A community waiting for answers
On Jan. 14, The Kansas Department of Health and Environment issued a boil water advisory for the Sundowner community. When KDHE issued the advisory, few homes in the community had running water to boil. This advisory left many residents feeling unheard and angry that something like this could happen and no one would be held responsible.
“My mind started racing — I asked myself, ‘How can I help? What can I do?’” Livingston-Holmes said. “This is not okay. I know as a family if DCF were to come into our homes and if we couldn't provide our children a necessity, like water, our children would get taken away. This business owner needs to be held accountable.”
Livingston-Holmes contacted the Saline County Sheriff’s Office first, who then reached out to County Emergency Management for help.
Emergency Management gave Kolling two hours to get temporary water to everyone, but according to county staff and the residents at Sundowner West, that didn't happen.
On Tuesday, Jan. 16, county officials stepped in. Saline County Emergency Management and Salina Salvation Army delivered bottled water and sack lunches to the community.
A seemingly small gesture that provided temporary relief but did not solve the overall problem — the need for clean running water.
On Jan. 18, KDHE attempted to conduct tests on the water at Livingston-Holmes’ house but was unsuccessful.
“She said she couldn’t perform the tests because the chlorine was too strong — while she was here in my house, she told me that a threat had been received and she would have to leave,” Livingston-Holmes said.
Livingston-Holmes and others waited three additional days before the KDHE returned to the community on Monday to test.
“I had to shut my bathroom door because the chlorine smell was going all through my house,” Livingston-Holmes said.” Some days it smells like the chlorine and the strong bleach smell, and then there are some days where you smell a urine or poop smell.”
Rep. Susan Concannon, Kansas State Representative of District 107 and former resident of Saline County, said she is aware of the situation.
"I am not involved in any water issues currently, so I've had to do a little background work to find out who to talk to and where to start," Concannon said.
Concannon only recently became Sundowner residents' elected official after the state legislature conducted redistricting in 2022.
"I made some calls this morning before my day got started. I do care about this. It sounds awful what these families are going through," Concannon said. "I hope that there is something that can be done but if nothing else, we certainly have people that need to know what happened."
Salina Post is currently supporting a water drive for the Sundowner community. Please bring cases or jugs of water to the Salina Post at 1825 S. Ohio St., Salina, KS 67401.
Sundowner residents remain with either low water pressure or no water for some families, even though many have reached out to Salina community representatives and partners on the issue for years.
On Monday, Jan. 22, KDHE successfully tested the water at Sundowner West, and Salina Post will update the story as that information becomes available.
Kolling has reported to residents and staff that he is continuing to work on improving the water situation at Sundowner. There has been little progress toward restoring reliable access to safe drinking water for all residents.
“Treat people the way you want to be treated,” Young said. “My mom always said, ‘It's gonna come back to bite you in the butt if you don't treat them right and one lie leads to another lie.”
Salina Post reached out to Kolling for comment on this story and did not receive an answer.
Salina Post contacted KDHE for comment on this story and did not receive an answer.