mortgage crisis is spawning health hazards.

[Lil Bit Special]

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/palmbeach/sfl-flppool0610sbjun10,0,3316175.story

With foreclosures on the rise, officials are fielding more complaints about fetid, algae-choked pools that could become breeding grounds for bacteria, toads and disease-carrying mosquitoes.

In Wellington, William Bucknam waged a months-long battle to get the pool at his neighbor's foreclosed house cleaned.

"It had a terrible color and it smelled because something was growing in it," said Bucknam, who lives next door to the house on Nevis Place.

That pool, like others at foreclosed homes, turned a dark shade of green when it was abandoned because no one was there to run the pool pump or apply the chemicals that help keep its water clear and clean.

On Wednesday, the pool was drained and cleaned after Bucknam and the Palm Beach County Health Department made numerous calls to the company that owns the house.

But other pools linger in unsanitary conditions.

It's impossible to know how many filthy pools there are in all of Broward and Palm Beach counties or how many houses with pools have been abandoned. But South Florida is known for its pool homes. Nearly one of every three Broward homes has a pool. The percentage rises to nearly half in Palm Beach County.

With more than 5,000 property owners facing foreclosure in the two counties, the number of abandoned pool homes easily could run into the hundreds. Officials in the various municipalities wait for neighbors to report them, and no single agency keeps track of how many complaints there are. Wellington is dealing with four unsanitary pool complaints, and the Palm Beach County Health Department has logged 63 cases as of last week. Pembroke Pines, Broward County's second-largest city, was maintaining 44 abandoned houses last week, many with pools that need to be treated with chlorine and mosquito tablets, Code Compliance Administrator John Earle said.

In unincorporated Broward County, building code supervisor Pat Saba said his code-compliance officers are dealing with 15 dirty pools.

In Wellington, Bucknam reached out to the village Code Compliance Department for help, but officers are prohibited from dumping chlorine in dirty pools or cleaning them, Code Compliance Manager Rose Taliau said.

Wellington can fine property owners who fall behind on a pool's upkeep, and that process started for the home on Nevis Place, Chief Code Compliance Officer Cindy Drake said.

The case still is scheduled for a special magistrate hearing on July 17.

If the pool's waters were not clean by then, a special master could have ordered the property owner, listed on county property records as U.S. Bank National Association, to clean the pool or face a daily fine.

A spokeswoman for US Bancorp, which owns U.S. Bank National Association, said the company is not responsible for maintaining the property because it is acting as a trustee for a group of investors who bought a bundle of mortgages.

A woman who answered the phone Thursday at Exit Realty, The Global Group Inc., west of West Palm Beach, said the company sent the cleaners to the home. She declined to comment further.

But in Delray Beach and in Pembroke Pines, code-enforcement officers take a different tack.

"We'll have someone go and throw a couple of gallons of chlorine in it," Delray Beach

Meeteer said his officers are dealing with unsanitary pools at four foreclosed homes.

In Pembroke Pines, unclean pools are discovered when neighbors report them, generally because they smell or when the yard is overgrown and a neighbor, police or a code officer reports it.

While Bucknam is happy that someone drained his neighbor's pool in Wellington and scrubbed its walls, he's upset that it took eight months to get the work done.

"I think the bottom line is that banks should be in the shoes of the homeowner," he said. "They should take action without having to be chased down and beat over the head." code-enforcement supervisor Tom Meeteer said. "It may not clear up the pool but it kills the algae and mosquitoes."