After 43 years as engineer for Lehighton Borough, Bruce Steigerwalt plans to step down at the end of this year.

Steigerwalt, 74, of Mahoning Township, made the announcement at a Lehighton Borough Council meeting earlier this year.

He plans to tie up a few loose ends on several projects already in progress, which will likely span into the start of next year.

Steigerwalt, who was appointed as borough engineer in August 1979, works for the borough on an as-needed basis.

“What I’m proudest of was when we completed the Rec Center in Lehighton,” Steigerwalt said. “Most of the projects that we got involved in were a lot of street reconstruction, stormwater projects.

“We did get almost everybody on the borough’s central sewer system after the new plant was built with the Central Carbon Municipal Authority, so that was kind of a good thing. There were areas in the borough that were not served by public sewer, and I worked on some of those projects that made that possible. We did a lot of Community Development Block Grant projects in association with Carbon County.”

Steigerwalt said one of the big issues the borough faces moving forward is “the antiquated sewage collection system.”

“That’s been a bone of contention for many years, even since the beginning of the CCMA project,” said Steigerwalt, who added there were plans in the early 1990s. “The borough and the people that had control were not interested in entering into the CCMA; they would have rather had the outlying communities as customers to the Borough of Lehighton.

“Even while that was going on, there was still the need for taking care of the existing infrastructure. I think their big issue really at this point in time is trying to improve on that sewage collection system because it’s old; it was put in back in the late 1940s, early 1950s, so they have their work cut out for them.

“I know they’ve been doing different studies to determine best approach because it’s a very expensive solution to rehab these old sewage collection systems.”

Becoming an engineer

Steigerwalt graduated from Lehigh University in 1970, and went to work for the state of Pennsylvania for the former Department of Forest and Waters. While there, he worked on dam construction projects for the state.

From there, he left and worked as a structural engineer for Ingersoll Rand in the steam surface condensers division, and then worked for Wilmot’s Engineering in White Haven.

In 1980, Steigerwalt said he went into business for himself.

“So I was working for a company while I was the borough engineer, and then it just got to be too much, and I then went into business for myself and took that on full-time,” he said. “At first, I was going to become an electrical engineer, and then in going to school and seeing what fields were available, I ended up in the civil engineering field and really enjoyed that.

“I worked outside, worked inside, do design work for all different types of projects in the civil engineering field. It’s something that I enjoyed all my life.”

Steigerwalt earned his engineering license in 1974.

“Shortly after, the laws changed doing survey work; at the time, we were allowed to do survey work with an engineering license,” he said. “So, I ended up getting my surveyors licenses.”

Steigerwalt is both a professional land surveyor, and a professional engineer, licensed in Pennsylvania, Maryland and West Virginia.

Serving in other capacities

Over the years, Steigerwalt managed to serve in various other capacities.

Most recently, he served on the Mahoning Township board of supervisors for a 10-year stint, and was a supervisor for nearly 11 years altogether.

Steigerwalt was also the Mahoning Township engineer for several years, and was on the Mahoning Township Planning Commission.

He was also engineer in East Penn Township, borough engineer for East Side Borough outside of White Haven and worked on projects in Tamaqua.

An eye on the future

Steigerwalt and his wife, Judith, have two grandsons to keep them busy.

“I enjoy going to their sporting events; the one is going to Penn State right now, the other is a junior in high school, so we enjoy going to his sporting events and seeing what he has in his future,” he said. “We’ve done some traveling, hope to do maybe some more; we’ll see what our health does and where we can go.”

Steigerwalt said both he and Judith are originally from the Lehighton area.

“We enjoy being here,” he said. “Our children live down in the Reading area, so we do travel.”

While he will retire as engineer of the borough of Lehighton, Steigerwalt stressed that he plans to continue to do private work for people, such as surveying and plans.

“Those are things that I’ll continue to do for a while,” he said. “As long as my equipment and my body holds up.”