Almost a year after raw sewage poured into two retention ponds in a Denton neighborhood and killed hundreds of fish, no one knows who’s left with the bill. The Wind River Estates Homeowners Association and the landlord of a nearby shopping center both blame the apartment developer next door, and both now say they’re headed to court. According to the Denton Record-Chronicle, the fight reached that point after a settlement offer the HOA saw as far too low.
It started in July 2025, when a sewage line ruptured at an apartment construction site behind a shopping center on Interstate 35E. A worker there dumped the raw sewage into a storm drain he thought ran to a treatment plant. It actually drained into the two ponds at Wind River Estates, where the sewage killed hundreds of fish and sent Mike McCormick and his neighbors wading in to rescue the ones still alive.
McCormick, now president of the Wind River Estates HOA, plans to sue the developer: Jordan Foster Construction. He says the company offered only $15,000 at a mediation in late March, about a fifth of the $75,000 he estimates it’ll take to pay for the damage. And that’s only if the HOA agrees to drop every claim against it. McCormick says the developer brought three attorneys to that meeting, and the whole thing left him feeling bullied — and forced into taking less than what he thinks the entire neighborhood is owed…