TOM KNAPP | Staff WriterWhen heavy rains hit Lancaster County, a portion of Manheim will probably be underwater.
“There’s no silver bullet,” borough manager James Fisher said Monday, two days after several roadways in Manheim were closed by high waters around Chiques Creek.
“With the big (rain events), it’s pretty hard to do much about it,” he said. “When we have a bad one, it kind of is what it is.”
TIM STUHLDREHER | Staff WriterManheim isn’t alone.
Rain this weekend caused flooding incidents throughout the county — and not always where you’d expect.
Susquehanna River communities fared pretty well over the weekend. Some inland communities had a rougher time as small waterways spilled over their banks.
Route 222 was closed for hours. Lititz Springs Park was “a lake.” Boaters lost control on the Conestoga River, which quickened and swelled as it intersected with swollen tributaries.
Charlotte Katzenmoyer, public works director for Lancaster, said the underpasses below the Amtrak line on North Plum Street and Martha Avenue are always quick to flood.
There’s not much that can be done to fix some of the problems.
‘High water is typical’
Geography is not on our side, PennDOT spokesman Greg Penny said.
“We’ve had a big problem with the concentrated amounts of rain we’ve been getting,” he said. “High water is typical in Lancaster County, because it’s a very low-lying area. So you get a lot of roads flooding.”
Scott Tanguy, director of Lancaster County’s PennDOT maintenance center, said two problem areas spring to mind — Longenecker Road, just south of Mount Joy Borough, and Meadow View Road, near Mastersonville.
There are more, he said, although he couldn’t immediately name them.
“We’re not talking about normal rain events,” Tanguy said. “Although, within the last few weeks, they seem to be happening with more frequency.”
When necessary, he said, PennDOT installs a box culvert or raises a roadway to reduce flooding.
On Saturday, when Cocalico Creek flooded over Route 222, Tanguy was surprised.
“I’ve been here for almost 10 years, and that’s only the second time I can remember 222 being closed,” he said. “Of course, the creek had received an inordinate amount of rainfall.”
Rising floodwaters on Saturday close Mill Road in Rapho Township.
Hard to pinpoint
Lancaster County Commissioner Josh Parsons said rain this past weekend hit the Cocalico and Conestoga watersheds hard, while the Pequea and Octorara watersheds “were basically OK.”
A storm a few days prior slammed the Chiques and Conewago watersheds, he said.
“It really depends on where the hardest rains go,” he said.
He said people can check with municipal offices to see where their land sits on local floodplain maps.
Lancaster Emergency Management Agency director Philip Colvin agreed it’s hard to pinpoint which watersheds will rise in a flood.
“The past two weeks, with so much rain, we’d have a problem in one area one day, another area the next,” he said.
Lancaster County is big enough, he said, that it’s rare for a rain event to affect the entire county at once.
“The good thing is, most local people know where those problems are in the area where they live,” Colvin said. “But sometimes it will rain somewhere upstream, and a creek will rise and a road will close and they hardly got any rain there.”
Some areas that were flooded recently, he said, haven’t been hit that hard since Tropical Storm Lee in 2011.
‘A huge problem’
Fisher said Manheim has initiated projects to dredge Chiques Creek and tributaries such as Rife Run, but it only does so much good.
“It’s helped, in terms of keeping the water flowing and out of the borough,” he said. “Every little bit counts.”
This past weekend, he said, several roads in Manheim were swamped, but the bigger problem was getting in and out of town.
The intersection south of the borough, where Route 72 and Fruitville Pike meet, was impassable.
“It creates a huge problem,” Fisher said. “If it’s flooding there, that means it’s also flooding at the other spots that come into the borough. That pretty much cuts us off ... from the south, east and west.”
Heavy flooding was primarily in the South Hazel, East Stiegel and Mill street area, he noted.
“Pretty much any time there’s any kind of issue, there’s flooding there,” he said.
A Lancaster city firefighter walks through high water on Manheim Pike after a rain storm in 2015.
‘Maybe if we built a dam’
Manheim has completed several floodplain restoration projects and is planning more, Fisher said.
The projects — to remove sediment from flood-prone areas and restore eroded banks to help prevent waters from rising to their surroundings — are “pretty costly,” Fisher said.
An upcoming project in Memorial Park could cost $1.5 million, he said. A similar project, where Chiques Creek crosses South Main Street, will probably cost about the same.
“We’re in the process of applying for as many grants as we can get,” he said. “If we don’t get grants, they’re not going to happen right away.”
Fisher isn’t sure what else to do.
“Maybe if we built a dam where the White Oak dam used to be — but that’s private property and the (state Department of Environmental Protection) isn’t very interested in having new dams built.”
That dam, which controlled the flow of Chiques Creek near White Oak and Elizabethtown roads, was removed around the time of Hurricane Agnes, in 1972, Fisher said.
The main street square in Marietta Borough - several blocks from the Susquehanna River - was flooded and impassable during the 1972 deluge caused by Tropical Storm Agnes. LNP Archived Photo
‘The river is running high’
Steve Bailey, emergency management coordinator for Marietta, said the riverfront town “did not have any major damage due to the rain or flooding directly” this time.
There was a lot of basement flooding, however, due to groundwater seepage, he said — a problem “whenever the ground is saturated and the river is running high.”
Although the Susquehanna River was over its flood stage, Bailey said the borough’s roads stayed open. East Donegal Township, which has more river frontage, didn’t fare as well, he said.
In Conoy Township, supervisor Stephen Mohr said they had only a few “temporary road closings due to high water.”
Conoy Creek was over its banks in several locations, he said — in some cases comparable to conditions after Lee in 2011.
