Wilkes-Barre Mayor George Brown, at the podium, is joined by other local and state officials on Tuesday for a press conference in front of the Brookside Levee.
Margaret Roarty | Times Leader
Except for the unavoidable size of the levee, we suspect many details of flood protection in Luzerne County go largely unnoticed — until something fails. In fact, we’re quite sure that’s been true for as long as humans have tried to defeat the flood-and-ebb nature of the Susquehanna River as it runs through us.
While the pre-Agnes levee arguably presented a bit of an eyesore in Wilkes-Barre for a while when that ugly, corrugated metal green extension jutted up a few feet above the earthworks, it’s a safe bet few paid much attention to it until the hurricane hit, the river rose and the emergency sandbagging failed, allowing countless gallons of water to cause billions of dollars of damage on both sides of the waterway.
Then everyone in the region, the county, and even the nation got a taste of how important “flood protection” really is, even if they didn’t all appreciate what it takes, much less the consequences of failure. The many years of cleaning and rebuilding transformed huge swaths of the valley and prompted a mass exodus of the lowlands for higher, safer grounds.
It’s been more than half a century since that happened, and a great deal of money was spent to raise the levees and build added safeguards, though there is still the sad caveat that not all endangered communities have been protected. Now people on both sides of the river can enjoy trails atop the levee in spots, as well as access to the river banks.
The number of people who lived through the Agnes disaster dwindles, while the number of those who take for granted the levee and related projects grows. Which is why it’s worth highlighting a relatively small story in Wednesday’s paper about increased flood protection for Wilkes-Barre residents living along the “Brookside Levee” near Mill Creek and the North Cross Valley Expressway.
As Wednesday’s story noted, the improvements took years and included raising the levee crest, replacing or improving the existing controls, clearing trees and electrical upgrades (including a backup generator) at the Weir Lane stormwater pump station, among other measures.
The work cost nearly $1.5 million, including a substantial fraction that assured Federal Emergency Management Agency accreditation. That bit of bureaucratic success technically means some 238 residents in 105 buildings valued at over $30 million can, if they have federally-backed mortgages, opt out of flood insurance — though Wilkes-Barre Fire Chief Jay Delaney rightly stressed no one at risk should forego such coverage.
Note that this improvement wasn’t so much about the levee as about preventing flood waters from rushing upstream into Mill Creek, threatening residents even when the levee holds. The backup generator assures that pumps designed to prevent such backflow keep working.
As we said, it’s the kind of thing most of us would never think of. Yet that’s exactly what the Luzerne County Flood Protection Authority and other local and regional officials must consider all the time.
Having and maintaining a levee isn’t enough. Assuring all the other numerous components of flood protection remain intact and up to date is often the unsung nitty-gritty of jobs we never hear about.
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