Still recovering from a deluge in late July, Pine Grove and Tremont in Schuylkill County this week were again hit by severe flooding.

But two grant-funded flood mitigation projects, begun after the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee devastated the areas in 2011, are coming to fruition.

The projects involve redirecting excess stormwater into floodplains — undeveloped low lying areas — in the Swatara Creek watershed.

Mitigation projects

One of the projects aims to lower the western side of Swatara Creek in the north end of Pine Grove to create a floodplain of about 10 acres in a wooded area so excess water would drain there instead of flooding the eastern side, which has homes, offices and Guilford Mills, a textile manufacturer that employs about 385 people.

County Natural Resource Specialist Wayne G. Lehman said about $6 million in funding has been secured for the project, which would result in about a 28-inch flood height reduction.

The funding streams are $3 million through the county from the state Department of Economic and Community Development’s Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery program, and an additional $2,991,000 state Department of Environmental Protection Growing Greener grant through the county Conservation District.

Lehman said the planning and design are done, and paperwork must be submitted to DEP. He hopes the work will begin in September.

The other project, the Good Spring Creek project, is upstream from Tremont. It’s being done in two phases.

County Administrator Gary R. Bender said it’s the “biggest flood project DCED has ever undertaken.”

Phase 1 involves removing an abandoned coal waste bank in Frailey Township. The $1 million for the project comes from two Growing Greener grants and a DCED Commonwealth Financing Authority grant.

“That will restore the flood plain along 2,100 feet of Good Spring Creek,” Lehman said.

Work began in July, but has been delayed because of the heavy rains. It should finish in October, Lehman said.

Phase II of the project has been awarded a $6.7 million Abandoned Mine Land pilot program grant through the Conservation District.

Phase II would restore in the same area an additional 2,500 feet of flood plain and remove the remaining coal waste bank.

Phase II will take two to three years because it is a much bigger project.

“Since 2011, the Watershed Flood Recovery Committee has been working to find and design projects to construct. It’s a slow process, finding grant funding and getting the project going,” Lehman said.

“There has been extensive effort to try to get these projects to construction,” he said.

Grassroots solutions

William E. Reichert, flood recovery manager for the Upper Swatara Project, explains how the projects developed.

“After the 2011 flood, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency got community members together to try to restore the floodplains. Part of that effort was the flood plain work group,” he said.

“We looked at options, ideas and issues throughout the watershed. The idea was to find places where we could mitigate flood or high-water issues.”

One of the ideas was to eliminate “pinch points” along the creeks.

For example, an unused bridge in Pine Grove had become a blocking place for timber and debris that would “lodge and dam up the flow,” he said.

“We also looked for places to plant trees” where mine reclamation had left bare land, allowing stormwater to run off and into the creeks.

“We planted about 40,000 trees above Tremont and just above Pine Grove,” Reichert said.

“Some were planted by volunteers, and some with a small grant we got to have commercial planters come in.”

The group continues to work.

“We’re constantly trying to look for ways to mitigate flooding,” he said.

“We don’t have all the answers, but we’re definitely trying. Wayne (Lehman) and I and the work group have a lot of ideas, and we welcome other ideas.

“People need to understand that we’ve been working on those projects for seven years, planning, designing, finding grant money,” Reichert said. “It doesn’t come easy.”