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By ANTHONY COLAROSSI; Times Leader Staff Writer
Friday, February 16, 1996     Page: 5A

WILKES-BARRE — U.S. Rep. Paul Kanjorski called it “the most important
moment in the last 24 years for the Wyoming Valley.”
   
Luzerne County Commissioner Tom Makowski called it “Bill Clinton’s legacy
to us.”
    On Thursday, Luzerne County commissioners, Assistant Secretary of the Army
for Civil Works H. Martin Lancaster and other high-ranking Clinton
Administration officials agreed on the blueprints for the Wyoming Valley
Levee-Raising Project, an endeavor that could cost $160 million.
   
Kanjorski, D-Nanticoke, said the agreement reached Thursday will guarantee
something Valley residents have been waiting 24 years to see — a higher and
more secure levee system to belt portions of the Susquehanna River.
   
Years of planning and negotiations stalled the project. But Kanjorski said
President Clinton “took it on as a special project of his” and brought a
concept closer to reality.
   
Kanjorski said Thursday’s agreement on the project’s General Design
Memorandum will allow county commissioners to sign a Project Cooperation
Agreement with the federal government within three months. The five-year
project can then begin by late summer.
   
The plan calls for raising the Wyoming Valley’s four existing federal
levees and flood walls by 3- to 5-feet, covering Wilkes-Barre, Kingston,
Edwardsville, Plymouth, Swoyersville, Forty Fort and Hanover Township. It
provides funding for communities not protected by the levees and funding for
an inflatable dam on the river to enhance recreational activities.
   
Under the plan, the federal government is set to fund 75 percent of the
costs. The state and county governments will assume the remaining 25 percent.
Kanjorski said Congress has already appropriated $4.5 million for the first
portions of the project.
   
Kanjorski and company met Lancaster and his entourage Thursday afternoon at
Wilkes-Barre/Scranton International Airport. The group raced in a caravan of
federal vehicles to Edwardsville to inspect the Woodward Pumping Station.
   
There, Lancaster and others watched as pumping station workers released
100,000 gallons of rust-colored water into the Susquehanna River. County
commissioners want to see federal funds go toward the rehabilitation of 13
pumping stations along the Susquehanna.
   
The stations were built in the 1940s and 1950s, and they have not been
upgraded since.
   
The $10 million to $13 million it will take to upgrade the stations is not
included in the current plan, but that is not stopping commissioners from
asking for more federal funds.
   
“We still want the pumping stations,” Makowski said, after a private
meeting with Lancaster, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers General Counsel
William Coleman and the Corps of Engineers Director of Civil Works Gen.
Stanley Genega. “We’ve made it very clear to the secretary … We’re still
asking for it.”
   
While Kanjorski said the federal funds for pumping station improvements
might be added to the project, Lancaster was not definitive.
   
“There’s no question of need,” said Lancaster, who has been in office two
weeks. “The question is how you respond to that need.”
   
Lancaster and Coleman praised Kanjorski for his persistence in pulling
together the parts of the project agreed upon. Coleman compared Kanjorski to a
“player/coach” in a game that involved the legal, the technical and the
political.
   
“He plays tenacious defense, and I wouldn’t want him guarding me every
day,” Coleman said.
   
TIMES LEADER/FRED ADAMS
   
Kingston Mayor Gary Reese explains the operations of the Woodward Pumping
Station in Edwardsville to members of the Clinton administration Thursday.
Upgrading pumping stations is not included in the current levee-raising
project.