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Work on a Lake Township pond is designed to preserve a home and a nearby cemetery.
Maple Grove Cemetery President Richard Culver says action has been taken to get water away from a nearby house and prevent it from flooding the cemetery. Water pumped from the basement of a house across the road flowed into Maple Grove Cemetery, inundating grave markers and headstones Wednesday.
CLARK VAN ORDEN/THE TIMES LEADER
LAKE TWP. – The state Department of Environmental Protection issued an emergency permit Wednesday night to breach a pond that’s been the source of flooding to a nearby house and Maple Grove Cemetery.
Colleen Stutzman, assistant regional director for the DEP’s northeast region, said the permit allowed opening up a 4-foot section of the pond that had been overflowing into a series of smaller dams and onto a neighboring property.
An excavator was brought in to do the work and eliminate the overflow house on Cemetery Road.
The elderly couple had been running three, 3-inch pumps to drain the water since Sunday. But the hoses connected to the pumps drained onto the road and into the cemetery threatening headstones, monuments and burial vaults.
“There is no longer any water being diverted or pumped into the cemetery,” said Stutzman.
“The local fire department donated 500 feet of hose to the Naugles. Now the hose goes across the township road and down a culvert.”
Goloris Naugle said they’ve had water problems because of the pond behind their house for several years.
“We have water running all around,” she said. “It’s scary.”
Most of what was in their basement ended up covering approximately an acre of the cemetery, according to caretaker Bill George.
Poor drainage along the road made the problem worse, he said.
“It’s going to have a lot of repair work,” said George of the cemetery.
“Some of the stones are already tilted,” added Deborah Evans of Lehman Township.
She has 30 plots in the cemetery and was concerned about what the pumped water was going to do to the vaults.
Cemetery President Richard Culver was on site most of the day.
The controlled breach and the additional hose from the Sweet Valley fire department helped temporarily.
“That’s going to get us OK until (Thursday) morning,” he said.
He and others would be meeting with DEP to assess the situation today and plan for the forecasted heavy rains.