Zelie commits $2K to flood study
ZELIENOPLE — Borough council on Monday agreed to commit $2,000 to study how best to implement changes which would help stem the tide of flooding in the county’s southern tier.
Borough manager Don Pepe said Monday the group of 10 municipalities that received a study in 2021 on how to mitigate stormwater in southwest Butler County is examining the best ways to actually implement the suggestions from last year’s study.
“Part of the work that the steering group has done over the past couple months ... (is to) try to figure out where we want this group to go,“ Pepe said. ”There's a lot of potential with what this group could do.“
The municipalities — including Adams, Cranberry, Forward, Jackson, Lancaster and Penn townships, as well as Evans City, Harmony, Seven Fields and Zelienople — will now consider whether a formal approach such as a regional stormwater authority is the best way to fund and move forward with the flooding fixes, or if something like a joint purchasing agreement would be better.
“It’s all, up to this point, been done through a contract ... the county’s had with HRG (Herbert, Rowland & Grubic, an engineering firm),” Pepe said. “But we really need a facilitator. So we discussed that at the last meeting. They’ve asked Jerry Andree, who has a lot of experience before he retired, and he is willing to take on that facilitator role.”
Among the changes recommended by HRG in its 2021 report are a series of fixes intended to remedy what the municipalities have seen as hotspots for flooding. Included in these are three areas in each municipality — with the exception of Harmony, which has two, and Jackson Township, which has four — identified as issues which should be fixed.
“I think we really need it, because we’re one of the municipalities it (flooding) does affect, us and Harmony,” said councilman Ralph Geis.
Council also approved a change to the retention rate, which was among the suggestions for each municipality as well as Butler County suggested by HRG.
The change, which took the form of an amendment to the borough’s stormwater ordinance, would reduce the amount of water allowed to flow from newly developed properties.
Prior to Monday, developers had to keep the amount of water a property released into the lower Connoquenessing Creek watershed the same post-development as it was before the property was built on. With the new change, developers must limit the stormwater release to 90% of the pre-development infiltration.
"This is in line with the regional stormwater management group's plans to be able to reduce stormwater and to control it a little bit better in our region,“ Pepe said.
