BY JIM LOCKWOOD, STAFF WRITER
SCRANTON — Old problem, new mayor.
Three years after the Scranton sewer system was sold to a water company, the city still has not determined how to deal with stormwater management over the long haul. Unanswered questions include whether to create a stormwater management authority, alone or regionally, and whether to charge fees for improvements and upkeep.
Mayor-elect Paige Cognetti will inherit the situation when she is sworn in today.
A microcosm of the issue festers in Albert Young’s backyard at 1713 Wyoming Ave. in Green Ridge. There, the city nearly a year ago replaced an old collapsed, underground conduit that channels the intermittent Meadow Brook under Young’s yard and three neighboring yards upstream. The collapsed conduit had led to large holes opening a few years ago in the lawns of Young and his next-door neighbors, Christopher and Michele Kennedy, 1717 Wyoming Ave.
But the repair project was not a cure-all for Young’s property. That’s because a nearby property downstream that has the stormwater conduit running under a backyard garage also had the conduit collapse and clog the channel during heavy rain. Young’s yard and basement flooded several times during the past year from these backups, even after repairs on his property were completed.
“Eleven months ago, they filled this (big hole in his yard) in. They haven’t done a thing since” downstream, Young said in an interview last month at his home. “Every time we get an inch of rain in a hurry, I mop water inside” the basement.
In May, the city condemned the garage downstream that several months earlier collapsed into the broken underground conduit beneath it. Efforts to contact the homeowner with the condemned garage were unsuccessful.
Mayor Wayne Evans, who took office July 25, will leave office today with the overall situation unresolved. Young fumed that Evans “is going to pass the baton” to Cognetti, but Evans took issue with that characterization.
Evans said he authorized an engineering firm to design repairs of the collapsed conduit downstream, but review, approval and contracting take time, he said. It was not possible to get all steps done within his time as mayor.
“I certainly didn’t kick this can down the road,” Evans said. “We expedited the (repair) design, so we are that far along.”
As for a stormwater management authority and fees, the city has explored pursuing a regional approach that would deal with the issue on a broader, geographical basis, Evans said.
“We’ve had discussions all along with attempting to do a regional approach,” Evans said.
Cognetti said she realizes that stormwater management poses not only an acute problem for Young and his neighbors, but also long-standing issues citywide and beyond.
“You can’t just fix these narrow problems and say, ‘We’re done.’ We must ensure we’re fixing the micro- and macro-level problems,” Cognetti said. “Stormwater management to me is part of a bigger picture of environmental responsibility. The politics of stormwater management is the hot-button issue, but it takes away from the fact that managing our stormwater is a responsibility of the larger government.”
The state and federal governments should play larger roles in devising solutions, but the city can’t wait, she said.
“We need to get to the table and get serious,” Cognetti said. “We need to map the city, map the infrastructure, every element, so we know what were dealing with.”
She’s not sure whether the end result may be a city-centric or regional stormwater management approach. Reviewing the pros and cons of a regional effort implemented in Luzerne County may be helpful, she said.
Young has fought the city for more than three years for a lasting solution. Previously, he dealt with sinkholes for many years, as parts of the old underground conduit collapsed and periodically flooded his property.
In March 2016, Young went to city council seeking help. Another hole soon opened in the Youngs’ yard upstream. In November 2016, the Youngs and Kennedys jointly filed a lawsuit in Lackawanna County Court claiming the city failed to maintain the conduit and is responsible for fixing the stormwater management problem.
The city finally got work on the repair project underway in mid-January 2019. But it was meant to be a temporary fix to tide homeowners over until the state undertakes a larger, permanent repair project that could be many years away.
Meanwhile, the Young/Kennedy lawsuit remains pending in county court and has been scheduled to go to trial in November.
Before the sewer sale of December 2016, the Scranton Sewer Authority owned all of the sewer-system infrastructure, including lines that are solely sewage, portions that combine sewage and stormwater, and parts that carry only stormwater. The city was — and remains — responsible for the portion of stormwater-only lines, called the municipal separate storm sewer systems, or MS4. Previously, however, both the city and sewer authority had a hand in maintaining the MS4 stormwater segment. Sewer system purchaser Pennsylvania American Water bought only the other two portions — sanitary sewer and combined sewer overflows — but not lines that contain only stormwater, and that meant the city fully inherited the stormwater segment.
In January 2017, the city hired a consulting firm, Arcadis U.S. Inc. of Philadelphia, to make recommendations. In March 2019, the city received a preliminary report from Arcadis that said the city’s eventual stormwater management fee could be about $32 per home, while fees on residential, commercial and other properties would be based on amounts of their impervious surfaces that produce rain runoff. Arcadis also said the city may look to create an authority to manage stormwater maintenance and collect fees, rather than do those through the Department of Public Works.Contact the writer:
jlockwood@timesshamrock.com;
570-348-9100 x5185;
@jlockwoodTT on Twitter