Oct 11, 2018 3 min read

If something happens once, it’s by chance. If it happens again, then it’s a coincidence. A third time? Now we’re seeing a pattern.

North Strabane Township seems to be approaching a troubling trend as two separate housing developments are experiencing catastrophic hillside slides that already have claimed two homes and are threatening several more.

The hillside behind homes on Oakwood Lane in the Majestic Hills development began collapsing in June. Although there initially were hopes that the hill could be stabilized, it continued to erode, forcing the condemnation of three homes, two of which were demolished last week.

That spurred outrage by people living in Majestic Hills and elsewhere in the township, leading to a homeowners’ association meeting Sunday night with North Strabane officials. While we disagree with members of the media being barred from the meeting, the municipal leaders should be applauded for trying to explain the situation to property owners who have serious concerns about the stability of the ground beneath their homes.

Township officials said during the meeting that they were preparing to stabilize Oakwood Drive, which is closed because it also is threatened by the crumbling ground.

But as they were addressing the concerns about the Majestic Hills project, other people were making the township aware of problems in another neighborhood.

Chris Forman and his landlord, George Dodworth, said they have struggled to draw attention to a series of slides a few miles away that began last month and are now threatening homes in the Meadow Lake development. At Sunday’s meeting, they made officials aware of the problems behind the Coachside Drive home that Forman rents, explaining that the collapse of the hillside forced them to cut the back deck from the house so it wouldn’t pull the structure with it down the hill.

A contractor working for the North Strabane Township Municipal Authority repaired a main sewer line that runs under the crumbling hillside on Oct. 1, but didn’t backfill the hole at the bottom, Dodworth and Forman claimed.

All of these issues raise concerns about whether the rapid residential development in North Strabane is moving too fast.

Township manager Andy Walz blamed the Majestic Hills developer for not controlling stormwater runoff or compacting the land to prevent hillside slides.

“It’s just a complete lack of oversight by him and anyone he hired to work on that development,” Walz said Sunday.

Joe DeNardo, part owner of the Majestic Hills LLC development corporation, placed the blame on township officials, who he claimed “approve the plans, then we build them, then there are issues with what they approve and what they mandated.”

For their part, it seems as though township officials have tried to be proactive through this process and appear to have alleviated some concerns from residents. Meanwhile, Majestic Hills residents claim DeNardo has been unresponsive to their complaints.

But all of this should be a wake-up call to the developers that have flooded the market with new neighborhoods and township officials who are tasked with reviewing the plans. It would serve everyone well to pause for a moment to make sure the work is being done right so more homes aren’t gobbled up by sinking ground.