Drainage issue under scrutiny
Center Township’s board of supervisors believes the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection may intervene in its drainage issues regarding the developer of the Abie Abraham VA Health Care Center.
Board Chairman Ronald Flatt said he’d talked with people regarding storm drainage from the VA’s building on Duffy Road. Neighbors to the building, including the family which sold land for its construction, complain that drainage ponds empty out through pipes onto their land, transforming their farmland to wetlands.
Flatt said he spoke to an architect involved with the land’s owner, Cambridge Healthcare Solutions, and was told that a modification to outlet pipes would be made soon because vegetation in the retention ponds had grown enough to start working.
Flatt said he then called DEP, where an official was surprised to learn that a change was planned.
“They’re preparing a letter giving recommendations and guidelines to Cambridge,” Flatt said.
The township will be copied on the letter from DEP once it is sent, Flatt said.
For now, the township seemingly has little ability to intervene on its own. It is waiting for Cambridge to seek final release of its bonds from the township, at which point supervisors will air their grievances and seek a remedy.
The township’s engineer, David Heath of Gateway Engineers, said the group’s permit would require the county conservation district to approve a different design if the current one doesn’t work. He also noted that a violation issued by DEP or from the district could change the situation.
Flatt is the most outspoken of the supervisors on the topic, arguing that the retention pond designs were inherently flawed. He appeared frustrated with the process during Wednesday’s board meeting, and he and a neighbor to the property speculated that the storm system’s drainage pipes had perhaps been opened without permission from proper authorities.
“I’ve had a lot of conversations with a lot of these folks over the last month,” Flatt said. “To be generous, I’d say that often the left hand didn’t seem to know what the right hand was doing.”
