Aug 8, 2018 2 min read

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is hoping to conduct a walk-through of the Chartiers Creek watershed by the end of September.

Michael Debes, a civil engineer with the Corps of Engineers, said the agency will lend its “technical expertise” to identify some of the problems causing extensive flooding throughout the communities within the watershed.

“This is just the first step to see what the problems are,” he said. “There can be so many different concerns, but it’s seeing it in person that’s always the best way – that’s when things really start to take shape.”

In March, Debes attended the county’s flood summit, which was held at Washington City Hall and organized by Washington County Commissioner Harlan Shober. It was the first meeting to try to determine an action plan for how the county’s municipalities could collaborate on mitigating the extreme flooding throughout the county in the last year.

“It’s not an overnight process, but I don’t want to let it lay,” Shober said Wednesday. “I want to keep it moving.”

Shober said the walk-through would not be a cost to municipalities, several of which have issued letters supporting the walk-through.

“When these communities are sending in letters of support, the Corps of Engineers sees that this is important to everybody,” he said.

Debes said the Corps, along with representatives from the state Department of Environmental Protection and local communities, would conduct the walk-through.

“The benefit to the local communities would be everybody getting together, discussing and seeing what the concerns are,” Debes said. “It’s a preliminary step.”

Jeff Hawk, public affairs officer for the Corps of Engineers, said local, state and federal agencies involved provides a “good mix of people” looking at the “flooding situation that’s having a real impact on their citizens.”

“It’s absolutely the right step to reach out to the Corps,” he said.