Re: DEER LAKE : Schuylkill County to be DREDGED Update, OCT. 19
Expected permit will aid Deer Lake
10/19/2007
Email to a friendPrinter-friendlyDEER LAKE — After nearly two years, Deer Lake council President David B. Crouse will finally get to the bottom of the problem with his borough’s 14-acre reservoir — literally.
A spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers said Wednesday the borough should receive a permit within the next few weeks to remove silt from the reservoir, hopefully before a window of opportunity for the project closes.
“I guess there was a little misunderstanding in the beginning about whether they needed a permit or not. They do need one and he’s going to do his best to expedite it while they still have the weather to be able to do it,” U.S. Rep. T. Timothy Holden, D-17, said Tuesday.
Holden’s office has been working with the Army Corps of Engineers to move the permit process forward.
By the end of the day Wednesday, a federal official was able to announce that the issue of a state general permit may be imminent.
“We’re looking to probably be able to issue a permit as early as next week,” said Ed Voigt, public affairs spokesman for the Army Corps of Engineers’ Philadelphia district.
He said the permit should at least be issued over the next few weeks, hopefully within the remaining month of suitable weather before the end of the year.
Crouse said delays of almost six months have already nearly cost him the project, which was carefully pieced together to avoid the enormous costs potentially involved.
“I’ve lost the dry season over bureaucracy,” Crouse said.
He said the lake has been drawn down since late 2005 when the borough used $56,000 in funding from the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency to repair silt collection basins damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
“You could walk out on it. It’s as dry as can be,” Crouse said.
He said borough officials had originally been under the impression no permit was needed for the project then later discovered it was.
Besides bureaucratic entanglements, Crouse faced a money issue.
When work to remove silt was last done at the reservoir in 1986, the cost was more than $150,000 but included repair to the dam breast.
However, Crouse also believes total costs would be higher now, more than 20 years later, and his tiny borough of 600 residents could not hope to foot the bill.
One problem is that no public funding for municipalities exists for silt removal alone, Crouse said, although he did manage to get some silt removal funded in the 2005 and 2006 project since it was necessary to complete hurricane repair.
Instead, Crouse worked out a deal with Guers Topsoil and Mulch Products, New Philadelphia, to remove the soil and market it with the borough to reimburse any costs the contractor cannot recoup.
Although he still has no idea what that cost might be, Crouse said state Rep. David G, Argall, R-124, and state Sen. James J. Rhoades, R-29, have already pledged $20,000 each to cover that cost, he said.
“Our project is a small example of what’s happening on a large scale across the state,” Crouse said.
He said with little or no funding to cover major silt removal projects in bodies of water as large as the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers and as small as Tamaqua’s Owl Creek Reservoir, communities will need to find new options to complete needed work in the future.
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=18934584&BRD=2626&PAG=461&dept_id=532624&rfi=6
