Lionel Fultz has watched his backyard slowly erode over the past two years as a stream that flows behind his Harper's Choice house has steadily widened and eaten into the soil in his yard.

Fultz, 86, blames the stream for carving a roughly 10-foot-wide, half-moon-shaped cavity into his yard and drowning the root foundation of a tree that lay in its path.

Fultz and his wife, Betty, moved to their house on Swansfield Road in 1970. Since that time, the stream behind their house was controlled by a dam made of rocks upstream from the Fultzes' yard. The dam is part of a storm drainage system.

But in 2006 the dam broke, leaving the Fultzes feeling helpless in protecting their yard from flooding, they said.

Lionel Fultz claims that the land where the dam was built belongs to the Columbia Association, a nonprofit homeowners association that governs open space in Columbia, and that the association should repair the dam. He said he contacted the Columbia Association in 2006 when the dam first broke and has attempted to contact them several times since then, but has received no response.

"They just ignored me completely," Lionel Fultz said. " ... I just tried to get them to do their job. I felt it was their responsibility."

Earlier this year, the Fultzes hired a lawyer in hopes of pressing the issue.

Their lawyer, Charles Jerome Ware, said he sent a letter to Columbia Association president Maggie Brown and Howard County Executive Kenneth Ulman on June 17 demanding that the flooding be "corrected" within 30 days.

Ware said he believes the county is potentially culpable for the damage to the Fultzes' property, in addition to the Columbia Association, because the county installed the storm drainage system originally, though he believes the land was subsequently transferred to the Columbia Association. Ware added that he did not know when the drainage system was installed or when ownership of the land changed hands.

But the Fultzes said they are outraged that neither the county nor the Columbia Association has yet taken responsibility to fix the dam or the damage to their property.

"Our backyard is sinking now because of what they did and neither one of them is accepting responsibility," Betty Fultz said.

Ware said that if he does not receive an agreement to rectify the situation by mid-July the Fultzes plan to sue the county and the Columbia Association.

Steven Sattler, a CA spokesman, said the association denies responsibility for the flooding in the Fultzes' backyard, but added that CA officials had met with county government representatives about the issue. Sattler refused to confirm or deny that the stream behind the Fultzes property is on Columbia Association land.

"CA empathizes with the position that this homeowner finds himself in as well as other homeowners who may be in a similar situation," he said.

Kevin Enright, a county spokesman, declined to comment because the county faces a possible lawsuit in the matter.

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