Native leads effort to add recreation to lake site
Becky Ellis, a Reading School Board member, has taken up the cause of returning Kaercher Creek Park near Hamburg to the heyday that she remembers growing up nearby.
Ellis remembers sledding at the park as a child and teaching her daughter to fish there.
“It was absolutely wonderful,” said Ellis, 43, who moved to Reading two years ago and still has family in northern Berks County.
Ellis grew up in Tilden Township — behind where the Cabela’s store now is — until she was 22. After that she lived in Hamburg for almost 10 years within walking distance of the park.
Now Ellis finds herself sending Freedom of Information Act requests to the EPA and letters to legislators trying to unravel the bureaucracy to bring the area back to how she remembers it.
Once a popular 185-acre recreation destination in Wind
sor Township, the park has fallen into disrepair.
The discovery of battery casings and lead contamination problems were linked to the former Price Battery site in Hamburg, itself an Environmental Protection Agency Superfund site.
Six years ago, Berks County decided against renewing its lease there. The park went back to the care of its owner, the Pennsylvania Fish & Boat Commission, which has no interest or mandate to administer a park.
For years, volunteers unofficially cared for the grassy shoreline and trail near the boat ramp around the 40-acre lake.
Last month, Friends of Kaercher Creek were finally be able to legally care for some areas around the lake. Now the group is trying to raise money to offset costs of the insurance policy required to support its upkeep efforts.
The lake still provides fishing opportunities to the community, although it has fallen into disrepair and hit a snag in September when a valve malfunction caused the lake to drain substantially. Neighbors report the water is in the process of rising to its normal level.
Meanwhile, Ellis has met with a group trying to restore the area for recreation.
They organized in October with an effort to contact state and congressional representatives and the EPA seeking to have testing completed of all areas of Kaercher Creek Park as soon as possible, including creeks flowing in and out of the park.
Nothing has changed. She updates the group via Facebook. The page has 2,300 followers.
“At this point I’m doing it on my own and keeping other people updated,” she said.
She is seeking support of elected officials to help sort out the extent of lead con
tamination once and for all and to make a plan to remediate it. The EPA let the state Department of Envi
ronmental Protection oversee capping of the area where the batteries were found, but there is no plan
to look for more.
“That’s the only way we as a community can move forward,” she said.
Ellis had tried to find out if there was money available in the state’s settlement with bankrupt Exide, the successor to Price Battery, but details of that agreement have not been released.