WILLOW -- The state is in the unlikely position of trying to figure out whether the sale of a motel on a lonely stretch of the Parks Highway involved a criminal failure to disclose an old meth lab there.

The Department of Environmental Conservation investigation began about a month ago with a call from Jim and Sharon Carbaugh.

The couple claim they agreed to buy the old Sleepy Willow Inn without knowing that two rooms once housed a meth-making operation, or that their efforts to clean up the place would result in a web of health problems they link to toxic residues left behind.

They claim they didn't know what state law requires: that sellers of a property who know it once housed a meth lab must tell buyers or tenants about the site's drug-making past if it hasn't been cleaned up. That's because meth-making can leave behind potentially dangerous chemicals clinging not only to curtains and bedsheets but imbedded in carpeting and paint. People should dress in coveralls, goggles and respirators if they're going to do the cleanup themselves, according to state guidelines.

Jim Carbaugh claims he now suffers from headaches, has had strokes and suffers other health problems because he spent two days scrubbing the rooms unprotected.

The couple's claims may or may not be true. A representative of the people who sold the motel -- and now own it again -- claim the Carbaughs knew about the lab when they agreed to buy the motel in 2006. The Carbaughs couldn't provide any medical records to back up their health complaints, though a national expert acknowledges that at least some of Jim's symptoms track with meth-lab exposure.

The Carbaughs made history a few weeks ago when they filed a first-ever meth-lab disclosure complaint with the Department of Environmental Conservation, the agency that administers the cleanup program. The agency isn't exploring the validity of Carbaugh's health problems. Officials there just want to get to the bottom of the disclosure question, a bit of detective work complicated by the lack of documentation so far.

A state environmental specialist, with help from the attorney general's office, is digging through the rather murky past of the run-down motel at Mile 90 of the Parks.

The state's case sounds straightforward enough: figure out how much the Carbaughs knew. If they didn't know about the meth lab, then who dropped the ball? It's a misdemeanor to violate the disclosure law.

But the inn's history is complicated, encompassing a series of owners -- including one who died within two months of a 2005 meth bust -- and a court case filed by the motel's current owners, who evicted the Carbaughs last year, saying they were way behind on payments.

Plus the Carbaughs never lived in the meth-lab rooms, only in a detached house.

All this is new territory to the state's environmental department, and to a division that normally tracks oil or hazmat spills.

"Usually with meth labs, DEC is pretty low profile," said John Brown with the state's Division of Spill Prevention and Response. "This is very unusual."

Meth motel

The Sleepy Willow sits empty now, a set of low gray buildings, its four rooms vacant and partly demolished.

An Alaska State Troopers drug unit busted a couple making meth in rooms 3 and 4 in June 2005, according to court documents filed in Palmer. Along with guns and meth-making apparatus, investigators found chemicals such as acetone, hydrogen peroxide and lye. They arrested the couple and told the owner about the lab.

State law requires property owners to post warning signs if a meth lab turns up on their land.

That's where things get fuzzy at the Sleepy Willow.

The troopers sent a notification letter to motel owner Pablo Flores the day after the bust, June 23, 2005, according to Young Ha, the state environmental program specialist trying to get to the bottom of the Sleepy Willow case.

Flores died Aug. 20, not quite two months later. The circumstances surrounding his death were not available.

The property went into default and reverted back to its original owners, Ha said. The title company that handled the default proceedings told her they never saw any signs warning of a former meth lab.

The Carbaughs say they signed a handwritten purchase agreement in May 2006 without doing a walk-through on the motel, expecting more official paperwork to be filed. A copy provided to the Daily News by the Carbaughs establishes a selling price of $75,000, with $800 monthly payments at 7 percent interest. Sellers are identified as Burton Fields and Jack and Becky Lirette. There is no mention of a meth lab.

Burton's wife, Betty Fields, said last week that's because it was Jim Carbaugh who told her husband and the Lirettes about the meth operation in 2006.

"He was aware of all that. We weren't," Fields said.

She said the partners in the Sleepy Willow sale plan to submit responses to the Carbaugh complaint with the state.

The Lirettes are Outside and could not be located for comment. They sued to evict the Carbaughs last June, claiming the couple owed more than $13,000 in rent, according to documents filed in an ongoing lawsuit in state Superior Court in Palmer.

The Carbaughs say they weren't paying rent, but rather stopped making payments toward purchase because the owners never followed through on promises to establish an escrow account. They filed a $169,000 lien on the property in 2007 to reflect money spent cleaning up hundreds of old tires and other trash, they say. A document that turned up during the eviction case includes a clause that says the Carbaughs are buying the place "as-is."

During court testimony last July, Sharon Carbaugh said, "I thought it was illegal in Alaska to sell a meth lab." Last week, she said she learned about the meth bust from a state trooper handling the eviction last summer.

Cleaning up the mess

It wasn't until late January, however, that the Carbaughs complained to the state about the lack of notification, environmental officials say.

Jim Carbaugh, 46, and his wife, 48, now live in an unfinished cabin just down the road from the motel with their eight dogs. Their monthly income is about $1,100, disability payments to Jim for an old lower-back injury. They had hoped to reopen the motel and maybe start a bakery.

Jim Carbaugh claims he wore no protection when he spent two days scrubbing the former lab rooms and now suffers headaches and worse, while Sharon says the chemicals triggered an existing seizure disorder.

Carbaugh says he found coffee cans filled with chemicals, a hose stretching from room to room, and white and gray powder everywhere.

"I pulled the carpet and all this powdery stuff's flying around," he said. "Then I started feeling sick."

The Carbaughs say Jim collapsed that week, then suffered a series of strokes and heart attacks within a year. He still gets severe headaches and nosebleeds, he and his wife say. Before they bought the motel, the couple say, Jim suffered from asthma.

It's entirely possible that someone who spent even a few days cleaning up meth residue could suffer headaches or respiratory problems due to irritants such as iodine and meth itself that can linger in carpets for months, said John Martyny, an associate professor at Colorado's National Jewish Medical and Research Center who specializes in meth-lab exposures.

But while the stress of meth-residue exposure could cause heart problems or stroke, proving a connection would be "pretty hard," Martyny said. "They can happen getting exposed to lots of things."

At any rate, health risks are not part of the state investigation into disclosure at the Sleepy Willow Inn, Ha said.

The environmental program specialist is still just trying to sort through the different stories from the different parties involved.

It's possible Pablo Flores died without telling anyone about the meth rooms, Ha said. That's part of what she's trying to figure out. Any prosecution would be handled by the attorney general's office.

"It boils down to who was originally responsible and where the chain of communication was broken," she said.

Find Zaz Hollander online at adn.com/contact/zhollander or call 907-352-6711.

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