PINEY COMMUNITY — After he retired from his job as an aircraft mechanic eight years ago, Illinois native Tom DiFiore and his wife bought two lake-access lots in the Alabama Belle resort area of Cherokee County, headed south, and prepared to sit back, relax and enjoy their golden years near the shores of Weiss Lake.

Too often for the past couple of years, though, DiFiore and several of his neighbors have found themselves sitting a little too close to another liquid – raw sewage – that they did not figure on being exposed to when they moved to the “Crappie Capital of the World.”

All joking aside, DiFiore has grown tired of trying to laugh away the reality of the slimy, smelly mess. The problem becomes most pronounced after a few days of dry weather, DiFiore said. That was the case on Friday, Feb. 19.

“It's supposed to rain on Monday, so for a few days all of this will be washed away,” DiFiore said as he stood alongside the roadway, his face curled by the stench. “But it will be back. It always comes back.”

The sewage, which originates in the home of one of DiFiore's neighbors, is supposed to be pumped into a nearby decentralized sewage processing station that services the area.

The neighbor – whose name is being withheld at this time – has been involved in a two-year billing dispute with the company that owns and operates the system.

According to DiFiore, after the neighbor stopped paying his monthly sewage bill in early 2008 for reasons that remain unclear, officials from Canaan Systems, Inc. shut off electricity to the pump that connects the neighbor's sewer line to a nearby holding tank.

Bob Guthrie, owner of Canaan Systems, Inc., confirmed as much to The Post last week. He said his company properly informed the Cherokee County Health Department of its plan to deny service almost two years ago.

Guthrie provided a copy of a letter, dated April 2008, that Canaan Systems sent to the delinquent customer informing him that his sewage service would be terminated on April 30, 2008, unless full payment of $321 was received by April 28. A notation at the bottom of the one-page document indicates that a copy of the letter was sent to the Cherokee County Health Department.

After the deadline passed with no payment, Guthrie said Canaan Systems shut off the customer's service.

Guthrie said Canaan based its decision to deny service on an Alabama attorney general's opinion from earlier this decade. Also, Guthrie said, the Public Service Commission gives Canaan the right to undertake collection action because it is a “financially viable utility.”

In accordance with the law and the conditions of its state permit, Canaan also notified both the county and state Health Departments of their intent to shut off the customer's sewage service, Guthrie said.

DiFiore said he called the Health Department after he first noticed sewage beginning to accumulate in the ditches near his home, sometime in the late spring of 2008.

According to DiFiore, someone at the Health Department said they would look into the matter. When the smell became less noticeable a few weeks later, DiFiore assumed the Health Department had instructed Canaan Systems to turn the pump back on.

Guthrie said Canaan Systems was never told to do that.

“We capped the line and turned off the power in late April of 2008,” Guthrie said last week. “We haven't turned the power back on since.”

Jim Hollins, the area director of the Alabama Department of Public Health with oversight over Cherokee County, said he was recently briefed on the situation by local Health Department employees who confirmed to him that they have responded to calls from Mr. DiFiore on at least two occasions since 2008. But Hollins said they told him that they never witnessed any standing sewage, and consequently took no action.

DiFiore is adamant that he brought the problem to the attention of the Health Department on multiple occasions.

“It was a lot more than [twice]. I called the Health Department, I don't know how many times,” DiFiore said. “The last time I called, they told me to call Canaan Systems. When I did that, they told me to call the Health Department.”

Hollins was at a loss to explain why DiFiore's complaints took so long to find an audience with the agency specifically created to handle public health concerns.

“I was not aware of the situation until recently,” Hollins said. “But I admit that two years is too long to take care of this type of problem.”

By mid-February, DiFiore said he'd had enough of the “run-around.” So he called the local newspaper, hoping for some publicity that would spur someone into action.

“If calling you guys doesn't work, my next call is to Rep. Richard Lindsey,” he said. “Something has got to be done.”

After a round of calls placed Feb. 22-23 to the local Health Department, Hollins' office in Birmingham, and the Montgomery office of James M. Coles, the director of the Community Environmental Division of the Alabama Department of Public Health, a meeting was held Feb. 24, during which action was finally taken.

Hollins said that during last Wednesday's meeting, the state Health Department's legal team determined that Canaan Systems must rely on the legal system to enforce the contract it has with the delinquent homeowner. As a result of his legal team's ruling, Hollins said he sent a notice on Thursday directing Canaan Systems to restore the delinquent customer's service within 14 days.

“I was not aware of this problem,” Hollins said. “But now I am, and we are going to get it fixed.”

Hollins also told The Post he has instructed John Hannah, an environmentalist with the Cherokee County Health Department, to make regular visits and ensure there are no more instances of raw sewage standing in the ditches along County Road 462.

Guthrie said Canaan Systems will comply with the edict from the Health Department.

“We are in a quandary because now we have to provide free service to this customer,” Guthrie said. “But we want to be a good neighbor, so we will do this even though he owes us a good bit.”

Guthrie said Canaan Systems will now have to rely on the legal system to recover what is owed from almost two years of unpaid bills.

DiFiore said he's happy with the outcome, but said the local Health Department will have to continue to prove itself before his trust is fully restored.

“It makes me wonder," DiFiore said. "If they let this go on for two years, what else is going on that we don't even know about yet?”