Dan Nicholson and Beth White became parents one week before a tropical storm, a defunct Richmond landfill, and a collapsed city sewer pipe combined to make them homeless.

Almost 19 months later, Nicholson and White have ended a bitter legal battle with Richmond, accepting a $200,000 settlement for the destruction of their Battery Park home by sewage-fouled floodwaters during Tropical Storm Ernesto.

Roughly half the settlement will pay off the mortgage on their home at 2601 Montrose Ave., directly across from the park in North Richmond. A quarter of the money will go to their lawyer, Steven S. Biss.

The rest, less than $50,000, is all that's left of a lawsuit for $10 million in punitive damages and $350,000 to compensate for their losses.

"We're very unhappy with it," White said yesterday from the family's new home, a house in Staunton that is owned by her brother. "We're really upset about it."

The family decided to accept the settlement instead of proceeding to trial next week in Richmond Circuit Court because, even if they won, they expected a protracted appeal and uncertain outcome.

"We basically felt the risk outweighed the benefit of going to court," she said.

Richmond Mayor L. Douglas Wilder said the city paid the family $180,000 for the house and $20,000 for lost belongings. The city will demolish the house and incorporate the property into an expanded park.

"It was settled for just about what we were going to pay" before the lawsuit was filed, the mayor said in an interview yesterday.

Wilder also said the settlement marks the end of Richmond's recovery from the Battery Park flooding, which should be prevented in the future by the completion of a new sewer line last year that was financed primarily by federal and state disaster relief.

"We have pretty much settled everything in Battery Park," he said.

However, the mayor said no credit is due to the City Council or 3rd District Councilman Chris A. Hilbert, whom he criticized for doing more to hurt the administration's efforts than help.

"We are moving forward in spite of council," said Wilder, who is facing re-election this year along with council members. "Battery Park is fixed long term, not a patch."

In contrast, White faults the mayor for her family's plight.

The ordeal began for White and Nicholson a week after the birth of their daughter, Arcadia. They were forced to evacuate their home, as were 71 other families flooded out of their apartments and homes in the neighborhoods around Battery Park on Sept. 1, 2006.

It was the second time that the couple had lost their Montrose Avenue home to flooding. They rebuilt after the first flood, which occurred when the remnants of Tropical Storm Gaston stalled over Richmond in August 2004 and swamped low-lying areas of the city.

The flooding began before Ernesto even arrived, as sewage draining from a huge swath of North Richmond backed up from a massive sewer line that had collapsed more than 80 feet below a municipal landfill that the city had closed two decades earlier.

White and Nicholson filed suit in November 2006, alleging gross negligence by the city for creating the landfill and failing to inspect and maintain the sewer system properly.

Once the suit was filed, Richmond officials took the family off the list for buyouts, while continuing to pay rent for the family's temporary housing. At the end of last year, with the new sewer complete, the city ended the family's rental subsidy.

Contact Michael Martz at (804) 649-6964 or mmartz@timesdispatch.com.