Work was completed on areas near streams ravaged by October flooding when parts of Bald Eagle Valley and Coleville in Spring Township saw 8 to 10 inches of rain in a matter of hours.
Robert Sweitzer, of the Centre County Conservation District, said Aug. 16 that construction crews wrapped up their three projects using federal Emergency Watershed Protection funds. Work was originally scheduled to be completed by Friday, Sept. 1.
A total of $187,800 was used to fix damage to 10 properties in Coleville, Julian and Howard.
Sweitzer said in a new release the work will help to stabilize the stream banks and rehab sediment deposition areas near homes impacted by the flooding.
In July, Centre County commissioners awarded the bid to Steven R. Krieger Excavating. The U.S. Department of Agriculture paid for 75 percent of the $187,800 contract, with the remaining 25 percent coming from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s wetlands and stream improvement fund.
The most costly of the work was done in Coleville, with $129,000 spent on two properties. Two more properties in Julian were fixed with $33,000 and another in Howard Township cost $24,900.
Sweitzer told the Centre County Gazette in June that a lot of collaboration was required between local, state and federal authorities, hence the long timeline from October until now. Sweitzer said the work also will help to mitigate damage in the event of intense storms in the future.
The autumn storm wreaked havoc across the entire northeast as a non-tropical system tapped into warm, summer-like weather, with much colder air following in subsequent days, according to AccuWeather. Temperatures plummeted to 30 to 40 degrees after record-high temperatures in the 70s and 80s. Though central and western Pennsylvania were among the hardest regions hit, flooding was also reported in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, as 2 to 4 inches of rain fell over a short period of time throughout New England.
Destructive high winds also were reported in isolated areas.
The USDA provided $93 million for EWP projects in 2016, spread across 19 states. The most money last year went to 27 communities in Utah for severe flooding in late 2014 and early 2015. Pennsylvania had no projects on the docket last year.
The last time the county made use of EWP funds was in 2011 for minor flooding. Before that, EWP work was done after flooding in 1996, when warm January temperatures brought rainfall on top of a large amount of existing snow.
