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WILKES-BARRE — Forget about not being able to see the forest for the trees, Joe Gibbons worries pretty soon he won’t be able to see Mill Creek with all the vegetation growing in it.
Gibbons is concerned the brush and trees and weeds that have taken root in the islands in the creek bed increase the likelihood of flooding. With less space in the channel, the water will spill over the walls and into the backyards, basements and streets in Miners Mills, he said.
“You don’t have to be a Rhodes Scholar to realize we’re losing anywhere between 5 and 11 percent of the flood-way capacity here with all this growth. This is ridiculous,” Gibbons said Friday.
And the flood walls built by the Works Projects Administration during the 1930s or 40s are in bad shape too, just like along Solomon Creek. But unlike a day earlier, when Mayor Tony George led city officials, state lawmakers and representatives of federal legislators on a tour to survey the crumbling infrastructure of the flood protection project in South Wilkes-Barre, Gibbons traveled solo while pointing out the trouble spots.
The city is getting $50,000 from the state for emergency repairs estimated to cost $200,000 along Solomon Creek. Beyond that they’re working on a long-term plan to fix the problem, officials said during the tour.
But in the meantime, Mill Creek gets worse and Gibbons gets peeved at the inaction by the city.
“I can empathize with the people at Solomon Creek and everywhere else,” he said. “But the bottom line is they sit on their hands and sit on their hands and sit on their hands and they do nothing and then all of a sudden everything’s gone. Everything needs repair.”
City Councilman Mike Merritt, whose district includes Miners Mills, has been in contact with Gibbons. Initially Merritt said he informed Gibbons the state had approved money for Mill Creek repairs, but had to backtrack after finding out that the funding was pulled.
“What I was told it went from pending to now we have to go through the process again and (the city is) going to put the focus on Solomon Creek,” Merritt said after Tuesday night’s council meeting.
Merritt agreed that there’s an urgent need to act. “I’m still going to push it,” he said.
To be fair, Mill Creek has not been neglected. A new bridge on West Sidney Street opened last year, and the overall $2.7 million project included the replacement of 75 feet of creek wall downstream toward Gibbons’ property on Coon Street. Farther upstream, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspected the earthen levee along the creek, moved encroachments such as trees, plants and an above ground pool and cleared vegetation in the creek bed. A $48,865 grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection was used to replace fencing and repair concrete on the flood wall.
Still there’s much more work to be done, according to Gibbons, 65, who worked in the private sector after serving in the Army Corps of Engineers. Start with clearing out the creek bed, then repair the walls and do regular maintenance on them, he said.
In the past the creek was cleared down to the bed, Gibbons said. And the city proposed applying grout to the wall to fill the space between the stones where the mortar is missing, a plan Gibbons said he favored.
“There’s spots where you can get at ground level and see right through the wall to the creek. You can see daylight coming through the rock. All that’s saying is the mortar’s gone,” Gibbons said.
Since the Wyoming Valley Levee System was raised in 2002, Luzerne County took control of it and left it to the municipalities to maintain the creeks and streams that drain into the Susquehanna River, Gibbons said.
The city hasn’t lived up to its responsibilities in Gibbons’ opinion, and the danger of flooding increases.
“Nothing good is happening, put it that way,” he said.
