Region’s flooding problems to be addressed next month
Courtesy of Jill Manganas
Jill and Tom Manganas woke up to this sight out their bedroom window Linden Creek flooded last July in North Strabane Township. They had eight inches of water in the first floor of their home on Linden Creek Road.
Courtesy of Jill Manganas
Tom Manganas took this photo from the roof of his North Strabane Township home when Linden Creek went over its banks last July.
Courtesy of Jill Manganas
Friends of Jill and Tom Manganas help salvage items from the couple’s warehouse on their Linden Creek Road property in North Strabane Township during flooding last July.
Courtesy of Jill Manganas
Jill and Tom Manganas woke up to this sight out a patio door when Linden Creek flooded last July in North Strabane Township. The couple had eight inches of water in the first floor of their home on Linden Creek Road.
Katie Anderson/Observer-Reporter
Ross Road in North Strabane Township is down to one lane after heavy rain caused the land near the road to slide down toward Linden Creek.
Tom and Jill Manganas woke up the morning of July 29 to muddy creek water pouring into their bedroom and flowing through the first floor of their North Strabane Township home.
They had 8 inches of water in the first floor and nearly 3 feet of water in a separate warehouse building on their property. They didn’t have flood insurance then, and had to spend more than $100,000 to repair the floors, walls and furniture that were lost.
Since then, they’ve gotten insurance, but the flooding’s become more frequent. Every time it rains, they stack furniture, move any electronics or household items off the floor and prepare for the worst.
“This is every time it rains,” Tom said. “This is how we’ve had to live.”
The coupe, who live in a flood plain off Linden Creek Road, brought their concerns with the ferocity of Linden Creek’s floodwaters to the attention of the township supervisors Tuesday night.
“I know we’re getting a lot of rain, but ‘Oh well’ isn’t working,” Tom told the supervisors. “I can’t live like this. When it hits that elevation, I’m done – everything’s gone.”
It’s a problem many residents across the county are facing – when it rains, it pours. That’s why the city of Washington decided to host a “flood summit” next month for local politicians and municipal officials to brainstorm solutions.
“At the local level, we’ve been dealing with this within the city,” said Washington Councilman Joe Manning. “This is becoming more and more frequent – every time it rains, we’re seeing this flooding. When I saw that other municipalities are dealing with the same thing, I thought it’s probably best that we all get together and address it as a regional issue.”
The flood summit will take place at 2 p.m. March 6 at City Hall, and Manning said he expects Washington County Commissioner Harlan Shober to be there, as well as representatives from the offices of state Sen. Camera Bartolotta and U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. Manning said he’s also hopeful a representative from the Federal Emergency Management Agency will be in attendance.
“This is no longer a rare event where you see flooding after extremely heavy rain. My neighbors’ basements all flood every time it rains, and our constituents and businesses are seeing major damage over and over again,” Manning said in a news release. “Chartiers Township has really been impacted, but we’re inviting officials from all surrounding municipalities. Hopefully, working together, we can find a way to deal with this.”
Manning said Wednesday that infrastructure improvements and much-needed dredging of creeks will be major talking points at the summit.
North Strabane Township Manager Frank Siffrinn said he’d be happy to have a township representative at the summit, calling it a “long overdue project.”
“There will need to be a certain amount of political clout to move forward,” he said.
Siffrinn also said that dredging the county’s creeks and streams would be the “first logical step in the process.”
Tom Manganas agreed Linden Creek needs to be dredged. He said he grew up playing in that creek, as his home has been in his family since the 1970s.
“It’s so pretty back there, but there are trees down and it’s a mess,” he said.
Siffrinn said because the Manganases’ home sits adjacent to the creek, flooding is almost inevitable.
“That property is going to continue to flood because of where it’s located,” he said. “It’s nobody’s fault, it’s just nature.”
Siffrinn did say the creek should be dredged but that a project like that could cost upward of $10 million – not something the township can afford.
Supervisor Robert Balogh told Tom Manganas the township would send an engineer to look at the stream to see if any fallen trees or debris could be removed to assist with water flow. He said many residents have experienced excessive flooding this year.
“This is not an isolated incident,” Balogh said. “We’ve had landslides, people have lost buildings.”
Township engineer Joe Sites said part of Ross Road near Linden Creek had been blocked off due to a landslide that happened Friday. He said the heavy rain caused the land on the side of the road to slip down toward the creek.
“It’s been taken down to one lane so no one is driving on the side where the hillside slid,” Sites said.
“We’re treating this as an emergency repair because that is a main access road for our residents. We’re in the process of getting a contractor to do the work.”