Exeter workers constructed their own makeshift levee to stop the rising Susquehanna River from reaching more structures in September 2011. A permanent levee is being pursued for the neighborhood.
Times Leader file photo
With the Susquehanna River rising the morning of Sept. 8, 2011, Exeter borough workers raced to construct their own levee in the middle of Susquehanna Avenue.
More than 60 truck loads of a dirt and clay material were deposited in the middle of the avenue for several blocks. At one point, the makeshift wall held back seven feet of water, preventing it from consuming structures beyond the river side of the avenue, officials said at the time.
“I was sweating bullets,” borough Councilman Richard Murawski had said amid the record flooding.
A permanent levee may be on the way.
Last week, Luzerne County’s Flood Protection Authority approved $600,000 in mitigation funding to complete professional engineering and surveying required to construct a levee there.
The goal is to plan a shovel-ready project so the borough can seek grants for construction, said authority Executive Director Christopher Belleman.
“We know there is a low spot in Exeter that is vulnerable to future flooding,” Belleman said, recalling the borough’s “heroic” work erecting the temporary levee in 2011.
The estimated cost of a levee in that part of Exeter would be $7 million, including $6 million for construction and $100,000 for land acquisition.
According to a proposed plan submitted to the authority, the earthen Exeter levee would run approximately 1,600 feet from the eastern side of Susquehanna Avenue between Lincoln and Grant streets to Orchard and Park streets.
It would protect 270 residential and commercial structures.
Depending on the final levee design and alignment, the existing sanitary sewage pump station, which is owned and operated by the Wyoming Valley Sanitary Authority, may need to be modified in conjunction with the proposed levee project, it said.
The flood authority also voted to provide $350,000 in mitigation funding to Wilkes-Barre to complete engineering and surveying for the Brookside Levee rehabilitation project.
A project summary provided by Belleman estimates the project along Mill Creek will cost $1.6 million, including $1.08 million for construction. As in Exeter, the city would have to seek funding to complete the work, he said.
The Brookside Levee is impacted by Susquehanna River backwater flooding along Mill Creek and was determined to be freeboard deficient following the updated hydraulic modeling of the river, it said.
Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown issued a release thanking the authority and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for their coordination to provide funding toward the “much needed restoration.”
The flood authority has access to mitigation funds to help communities not protected by the Wyoming Valley Levee-raising project completed in the early 2000s, Belleman has said.
Although the levee protects much of Wilkes-Barre, the Brookside Levee is not within its coverage footprint, Belleman said.
Duryea also recently received mitigation funding for a study of work needed to bring its levee up to federal standards. Additional federal and state funds must be pursued to pay for the actual levee upgrades, officials have said.
Primarily along the Lackawanna River, Duryea qualifies for the mitigation funding because the raised Wyoming Valley Levee creates upstream backwater when it floods, preventing the Lackawanna from draining into the Susquehanna where the two rivers meet in Duryea, officials have noted.
The borough had worked with the state to close a two-block gap in its one-mile levee after 139 borough properties were flooded in 2011, but the Federal Emergency Management Agency has decided it won’t certify the older remaining levee for flood insurance purposes because it has deficiencies, including a freeboard buffer on top deemed insufficient based on the latest flood threat modeling, officials have said.
Reach Jennifer Learn-Andes at 570-991-6388 or on Twitter @TLJenLearnAndes.
