People who bought townhomes in the pricey Nature's Watch community in northeast Pinellas County had no way of knowing that hidden beneath the pretty pink paint and the tile roofs was a house of cards. 

Buildings not even 10 years old are falling apart. When it rains, those townhomes leak through the ceilings, doors, windows and chimneys. Wood beneath the stucco has rotted through or turned to mush. Balconies are considered so dangerous that some were removed and residents have been warned to stay off mof others. Mold thrives in the walls. A forensic construction expert calls it the worst construction he has seen in his 20-year career. 

But has the builder been forced to pay to repair the homes? No. Has the county building department that signed off on the project been held accountable? No. Has the state yanked the licenses of the private professionals who designed and built this disaster? No. 

No, the only people paying the price are those who invested their money and their dreams in homes at what was advertised as a luxury complex. The resulting destruction in their lives is difficult to describe adequately. 

St. Petersburg Times staff writer Robert Farley reported Sunday that owners of all 182 units are being required by the courts to fork over tens of thousands of dollars in assessments to pay for repairs to the six oldest buildings. That is on top of their mortgage payments, other bills and legal costs. One family that owns two lots has had to pay $48,000 in assessments just since March. 

Some residents have been ruined by the costs. Seventy homeowners have had liens placed against their properties. Some have sold their homes at bargain-basement prices to escape the likelihood of even more assessments down the road, since the extent of problems in most of the 55 buildings has not yet been determined. Residents report that they can't sleep, fear losing everything they have, or are on medication for anxiety. 

Who is to blame for this horror? Certainly the builder of the project, but who was that? Nature's Watch was developed starting in 1992 by Richard Geiger and his now-defunct company, Eagles Reserve Ltd. The general contractor was Bama Construction. But the principal of the construction company has acknowledged that Bama Construction had no employees at the time it was supposedly building Nature's Watch. Some people close to the case believe that Bama Construction just pulled the permits to make it all nice and legal, and then turned the work over to Geiger, who is not a licensed contractor. 

The problems at Nature's Watch have been ongoing for several years, but there still is no relief, much less justice, for the residents. The state Department of Business and Professional Regulation supposedly is now investigating how the project got built, but no one at the state level will talk publicly about that. 

Even less attention has focused on the Pinellas County Building Department. County building inspectors regularly signed off on phases of construction at Nature's Watch, but the county building official argues that the disastrous outcome is not their fault. "We're not quality control. We're quality assurance," he says. In Pinellas County, apparently, building officials can't assure quality, or even safety, for that matter, which ought to alarm the county administrator and county commissioners enough to launch a thorough review of the department and its staff. 

Indeed, if the kind of slipshod, even hazardous building practices discovered from foundations to roofs in some buildings at Nature's Watch can occur under the county building code and under the noses of county inspectors, then both the code and the inspectors have failed and deserve the most intense scrutiny that government, law enforcement and the courts can provide.