‘Removal of homes could alleviate flooding’

Pittsburgh Tribune Review, October 19th, 2006

Dozens of homes in Shaler and Hampton flooded by Hurricane Ivan in2004 won’t be around much longer to be flooded again.

Both townships are using federal and state grant money to voluntarily buy residents out of their homes, which will then be demolished.

The ground would become open space, giving Pine Creek more room to stretch its banks and possible alleviate flooding downstream.

In Hampton, 15 houses in the lower Allison Park and Naylor Avenue area off Route 8 will be removed at a cost of about $1 million, Manager Chris Lochner said.

Flood walls built about 20 years ago at a cost of $6 million were powerless to stop the area from being inundated by Ivan.

“It was a flood plain in 1850. It’s a flood plain today. It’s a flood plain because it floods,” Lochner said.

What is now a neighborhood could become a fisherman’s paradise, Lochner said, as Hampton also has plans to divert the creek into serpentine pattern.

Shaler now has enough money to remove 18 homes in the Fall Run area, and is targeting up to 40 that have been repeatedly flooded, Manager Tim Rogers said.

It’s a loss in some cases of century-old homes. But over his 14 years as manager, Rogers said he’s seen the area flood five times.

“You never recover from that loss, but you have to go on and determine the best way to deal with it in the future,” Rogers said. “We can’t keep fighting mother nature.”

Lochner and Rogers discussed their townships’ plans and recovery from the Sept. 17, 2004, flooding during a recent visit by Allegheny county Chief Executive Dan Onorato, who last month, began returning to communities to check on flood recovery progress and any remaining problems.

Onorato said he remembered well the devastation in the Fall Run area of Shaler, where some residences were rescued by boat out of their second floor windows.

“It was like a war zone down here. You can tell by how many of the homes are still abandoned,” Onorato said, as he and other officials surveyed the area by bus.

Onorato also visited the Butler Plank Road house of Donald and Constance Wagner, who overcame not only flood water but sewage to stay in their home of 43 years.

They received a new furnace and hot water tank through county assistance programs.

“We came back pretty good,” Constance Wagner said.

Beyond the residential damage, Rogers said, Shaler lost about a half-dozen businesses, some more that 50 years old, along Route 8 and close to 700 jobs. With infrastructure such as roads repaired and streams restored, he said Shaler’s recovery now is largely economic and focused on redevelopment of the Route 8 industrial corridor.

A potential bright spot is that Pittsburgh businessman Bill Kelman, a new owner of Glenshaw Co., said he is preparing for a Nov. 15 restart of the glass-making facility.

He could not say yet how many people will be employed when one of the plant’s furnaces goes back into production. About 350 jobs were lost when the plant closed in 2004.

“We have made progress,” Kelman said. “This is very exciting.”