TUNNEL VISION
Officials push new state fund to fix crumbling storm arches, blight, brownfields
POTTSTOWN >> When federal, state and borough officials gathered Wednesday to talk about Pottstown’s urgent stormwater infrastructure needs, they had no idea the next day would show the truth of their claim.
But Mother Nature obliged on Thursday with perhaps the best proof possible — more than five inches of rain in the short span of time that overwhelmed Pottstown’s aging stone tunnels, flooding homes, roads and stores.
The deterioration of the aging stone and brick storm tunnels over Pottstown’s four streams has been an intractable Pottstown problem for years.
“These things can run under someone’s house and they may not even know it’s there until something goes wrong,” said Pottstown Public Works Director Doug Yerger.
And if you think it has no impact on you, consider that Public Works has so far mapped 69 road crossings, and documented arches and tunnels under 225 privately owned parcels in Pottstown.
Even so, the public works department may not know where they all are. They were built slowly over the last 150 years and Pottstown was developed, and no one kept any records.
Borough Manager Justin Keller even cautioned that
the map Yerger provided at Wednesday’s press conference of the four major creeks through the borough is an estimate.
Keller said one of the difficulties in dealing with these expensive problems is “there is no one funding stream that takes this on, especially when it’s on private property.”
The deterioration of these tunnels was made most dramatically relevant in 2004 when an arch section beneath Walnut Street between North York and Manatawny streets collapsed in spectacular fashion.
It took 10 months and about $600,000 to repair, consuming Pottstown’s paving budget for two years and requiring a grant of almost half the cost from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Since then, at location after location, over the years, sinkholes have appeared, more and more often on private property.
Last May, Marcia Levengood became one of that growing number when she came out to the car behind her Walnut Street home and found a giant hole in her driveway.
An arch that runs under her property and then turns west down the alley between Walnut and Chestnut streets toward Manatawny Creek had collapsed in on itself.
Ironically, the tunnel collapse in 2004 had occurred right in front of her sister’s house.
A year later, all that’s been done is the borough has closed off the alley and Levengood has put safety fence around her driveway and hung an ironic sign on it that prohibits “skinny dipping and chunky dunking.”
“Lake Levengood” became an exhibit on the tour of Pottstown’s stormwater problem Wednesday, with the officials peering into the arch where a trickle of water meandered around the bricks and other brick-abrack that has been caught on the obstructions.
But one day later, the sink-hole was a burbling cauldron of stormwater, over-topping the hole and adding to the thigh-deep flooding in the alley.
A return visit Friday showed the cauldron had done its work, eroding the sinkhole into an even larger one.
Considering the outsized cost of repairing such structures, it’s more than the average property owner can bear and often more than an insurance company is willing to pay.
“Something like this could cost half-a-million dollars to fix. What kind of homeowner has that kind of money?” asked state Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-146th Dist. “It’s probably more than their house is worth.”
The result, he said, can be “the homeowner just walks away and Pottstown gets another abandoned property. That’s not something Pottstown needs,” said Ciresi, whose district comprises about 60 percent of the borough.
The other 40 percent is represented by state Rep. Tim Hennessey, R-26th Dist. and he’s been getting an arch education in recent years as well.
“I’ve been inside one of them and you start to see the effect of 150 years of wear and tear on these tunnels and you start to realize the magnitude of the problem,” said Hennessey.
He noted that a 2012 study “predicted they would start to collapse,” and that prediction is proving disturbingly accurate.
The solution, according to Pat Patterson, is Gov. Tom Wolf’s proposed RestorePA initiative which would devote $4.5 billion over the next four years to critical infrastructure and other “high impact projects.”
Patterson is the director of the Southeast Regional Office of the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and he was on hand Wednesday to talk about how this initiative could help close quite a few gaps, financial as well as physical.
“This kind of problem is a perfect fit for RestorePA,” said Patterson.
“This arch system is failing and the simple truth is this: Pottstown doesn’t have the financial resources to address these challenges,” Patterson said.
Wolf’s plan, as have several before this, calls on a politically sensitive source of funding — levying a “severance tax” on the natural gas industry currently “fracking” Pennsylvania’s abundant shale reserves to extract the gas trapped within.
Previous attempts to impose this tax have met with strong Republican resistance. Pennsylvania is the only “shale gas” state that does not impose a “severance tax,” although it does impose an “impact fee,” which is directed mostly to the localities the drilling impacts.
But bi-partisan support for this bill is stronger than the previous attempts. “It’s not an easy lift,” said Hennessey, who supports it and voted to bring a similar measure to the House floor last year.
“I think it’s doable, but we have to keep it reasonable, we do have the impact fee, and we need to show some benefit,” he said.
Lisa Walter, who was in Pottstown Wednesday representing state Sen. Bob Mensch, R-24th Dist., said he supports it as well.
There are currently 23 out of 50 co-sponsors for the initiative in the Senate.
In addition to things like infrastructure, green and otherwise, RestorePA would pay for storm preparedness and disaster recovery, certainly on the minds of Pottstown officials and homeowners after Thursday’s storm.
It could also be used to pay for demolishing blighted properties and redeveloping them; clean-up former industrial sites, often called brownfields, to get them ready for re-development — both things that could benefit Pottstown.
Other uses include highspeed internet, transportation and transit projects, including “back roads,” and business development, according to materials provided by the DEP.
“This could catapult Pennsylvania over other states in terms of attracting investment,” Patterson said.
It’s also becoming increasingly necessary, he said, as climate change brings more storms like the one that hit Thursday which more than one person said was worse than anything they had seen in a long time.
“We can’t control this unprecedented rainfalls we’re seeing, the fact that the climate is changing,or that infrastructure build over 100 years ago is beginning to fail,” said Patterson. “These storm surges are becoming the norm.”
The mix of higher volumes of water coming through a crumbling 150-year-old stone tunnel at a higher velocity is not a recipe for sustainability, said Yerger.
“You would be amazed at the velocity this water moves through these tunnels,” he said.
And when the rain comes fast, like on Thursday, it can overwhelm a damaged system.
Standing next to a partially collapsed arch on the site of the old Frederick
“This arch system is failing and the simple truth is this: Pottstown doesn’t have the financial resources to address these challenges.” — Pat Patterson — Director of PA DEP’s Southeast Office
“I’ve been inside one of them and you start to see the effect of 150 years of wear and tear on these tunnels and you start to realize the magnitude of the problem.” — State Rep. Tim Hennessey, R-26th Dist.
COLLAPSING ARCHES • 2003 — Borough discovers arch collapsing in the first block of Walnut Street between Manatawny and York streets. Cost to repair is roughly $700,000, takes 10 months. • April, 2009 — Borough seeks $200,000 in Community Development Block Grant money for arch repairs. • May, 2009 — Arch collapses on property of the former Frederick Brothers lumber mill at N. Hanover and East Street. It remains un-repaired. • December, 2012 — Arch on Grant Street near side entrance to The Hill School collapses. • September, 2013 — $389,000 grant from EPA pays for installing manholes along two archways to improve access for assessment and repair. • May, 2018 — Another section of the arch that collapsed in 2004 collapses behind Walnut Street home. • August, 2018 — Section of storm arch behind and beneath former Pottstown Hospital property at 1200 High St. Brothers lumber mill at North Hanover and East streets Wednesday, Yerger had a foreshadowing.
“There’s a lot of debris in that sinkhole and if you get a storm surge, the water can back up behind it and surcharge the whole system,” he warned.
One day later, a visit to that same location showed the truth of his prediction: Rainwater had pushed the manhole cover in the street out of its fitting and water was rushing out, not in to the system.
“If it comes out, it will follow the contours of the land and there’s no way of controlling it,” Yerger warned.
“This is a big issue to take on, and one that can really hurt the community,” Ciresi said. “We have to find a solution and maybe (RestorePA) is it.”