Wyoming Valley Levee pump station work approved

Luzerne County’s Flood Protection Authority board approved a $344,195 change order Tuesday that will put the finishing touches on a Wyoming Valley Levee pump station upgrade project.

The system’s 13 pump stations have deep water wells to collect drainage from the land side of the levee when it can no longer naturally feed into the Susquehanna River during a flood. The pumps lift the collected water up over the levee wall and dump it onto concrete aprons into the Susquehanna.

County council had earmarked approximately $1 million for a pump station electronic controls upgrade, but additional authority operational or capital funds must be used to address related work, said authority Executive Director Christopher Belleman.

The project approved Tuesday will install sensor instruments that monitor stormwater levels in the pump wells, Belleman said.

“When we’re operating on automatic mode, these instruments communicate to the pumps and tell them when to turn off and on. This keeps the protected side of the levee dry during a high-water event,” Belleman said.

The control panels and instruments are more than 25 years old, he said. Both had to be updated so there are no issues with new control panels communicating with outdated instruments, he said.

“We’ll be good for the next quarter century when this work is completed,” Belleman said. “It’s all about ensuring reliability of our system.”

Ohio-based Pro-Tech Systems Group is completing the upgrade.

The authority board also approved a $12,500 agreement Tuesday with Forty Fort-based Arrow Land Solutions LLC for tenant relocation services related to a flood buyout property.

This project is part of an ongoing, federally-funded flood mitigation program that is managed by the authority and linked to the levee-raising project completed in the early 2000s.

Authority Deputy Director Laura Holbrook said federal regulations require coverage of some relocation expenses for an elderly rental tenant in a residential property at 242-246 Route 11 in Hunlock Township that will be be acquired and demolished. Buyout properties must remain government-owned and undeveloped.

Holbrook said the payment to Arrow Land Solutions will fund both consulting services to ensure the authority is in compliance with federal regulations and the eligible relocation expenses for the tenant.

Public comment

Forty Fort resident Mike Mattei criticized an authority change that limits public comment to agenda items, saying the limitation was enacted after he and other citizens started attending authority meetings in opposition to the authority’s decision to lease unused space in its Forty Fort headquarters to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Mattei and others have expressed their disapproval of the federal agency’s handling of immigration matters.

Authority representatives said the public comment change was an administrative decision to make meetings more efficient and was not intended to silence people.