ABOVE AND BEYOND
Township crews got flooded water treatment plant up and running; backhoe operator rescued motorist
UPPER GWYNEDD » Tropical Storm Isaias may have swept through the area in just a few hours on Aug. 4, but Upper Gwynedd will be cleaning up for quite a while.
Township Manager Sandra Brookley Zadell described the flooding damage throughout the township Monday night and commended staff who went above and beyond, including an emergency rescue on Sumneytown Pike caught on video.
“I don’t think our Public Works employees often get to save ladies in their backhoes, but it was a really great use of his equipment,” said Zadell.
The video in question was posted on Facebook by resident Brian Clark and reposted by the township and police department on social media. The 82-second clip shows drivers sitting on a flooded Sumneytown Pike, just east of Church Road and West Point Pike, as two eastbound drivers splash their way through several inches of water on the roadway. A third car gets stuck, and the driver leaves her vehicle as a township backhoe driven by Public Works employee John Macquire pulls up behind.
“He just yells out of his backhoe, ‘Get in the bucket,’ and she runs out and jumps into the bucket, and he drives her away and takes her to safety. That’s John,” Zadell said.
“I feel like that might have been his best backhoe moment, and thanks to all of Public Works: On that day they were just racing all over town, to help the police department and fire company get people to safety, and close the roads.”
Zadell added thanks to staff for helping pitch in throughout the storm, showing a group photo of public works and wastewater treatment plant staff from a township charity walk last year. Special thanks go to plant Director of Wastewater Operations Rebecca Mason, Director of Public Works Willard Troxel, and plant employees Jim O’Mara, Tim Griffiths, Jonathon Hanson, Steve Heloskie, Dan Reinford, Jeremey Matozzo, John Cosentino, Jim Petherbridge, Brian Johnson, Robert
Hegedus and Bill Smith, according to the manager.
Two contractors, from construction firms Blooming Glen and BSI, also halted projects underway in the township to help during the heavy rains, Zadell said, as did members of the township’s engineering and sewer engineering consultants. As she spoke via Zoom video on Monday night, Zadell showed a series of slides depicting damage from the storm, including the “totally flooded” wastewater plant on Township Line Road, and large storage tanks dislodged and displaced by the water.
“This is our huge tank, that is usually in the wastewater treatment plant, but as you can see it’s on its side, because we had some really huge flooding down at the plant during the tropical storm,” said Zadell.
“It’s so hard to imagine how they can be so big, and just floating on their sides. We had over 15 feet of water in many of our buildings at the plant,” she said.
Despite that heavy flooding, Zadell told the board, township wastewater treatment plant staff led by Mason were able to fully restore forward flow from the plant by 8:30 p.m. on Aug. 4, roughly nine hours after flow was interrupted.
“We were able to meet our permit limits, that DEP imposes, despite having more than half of our plant underwater,” Zadell said.
The state’s Department of Environmental Protection, while monitoring conditions at plants across the state after the flooding, had high praise for Upper Gwynedd, according to Commissioner Martha Simelaro.
“They commented that ‘We set the bar very high for other plants in the area, in terms of how they should have responded to the disaster.’ We ranked very high up there with DEP, which is always a good thing,” she said.
Zadell said a full recovery and repairs of the damage caused by the flooding could take months, and said staff are “constantly working, every day, to bring us back to where we were.” Township police, the Upper Gwynedd Township Fire Department, and Emergency Management
Coordinator Jeff Tomczak were also thanked for their help throughout the floods, and for fast and frequent updates on their social media pages to keep residents informed.
“The top thing I want to say after the storm to our residents is, when it’s raining like that, you can’t go driving. I think the storm really surprised people,” Zadell said.
“You thought it was just raining a little bit, and people were out in their cars, and just overtaken by the flooding. It’s really important to stay home, and most important was not to drive around barriers, because that’s how people get stuck,” she said.
Township Engineer Isaac Kessler said his firm is currently evaluating recent repairs to the Sumneytown Pike bridge where the water rescue took place, and said recent minor repairs have maintained the bridge as drive-able in the short term, but uncovered problems that may need further work long-term.
“They discovered some deterioration and some significant wear within the bridge, so that’s something that is on our radar,” he said. “While the repairs now have it in a safe condition for the foreseeable future, that’s kind of a longerterm item.”
And in response to a question from board Vice President Denise Hull, Zadell explained a township social media post from earlier Monday that said the township’s planned road paving program for 2020 had been postponed due to Isaias.
“It’s the contractor. They said their asphalt plant got flooded, but I’m not accepting that answer. So we’d like them to honor the contract that we have, we’ll be expecting them to complete the paving by August 21st, but we are just working through that with them now,” Zadell sadi.
One payment, to contractor Allan Myers for $146,250, for work already done on the 2020 road paving program was unanimously appoved by the board, and details are included in the board’s meeting materials packet for Aug. 10. Upper Gwynedd’s commissioners next meet at 7 p.m. on Sept. 14; for more information visit www. UpperGwynedd.org.