Engineer suggests fix for Route 16 flooding in borough
By PAT FRIDGEN Echo Pilot

Keith Moore got down and dirty as he performed his duties at the request of the Greencastle Borough Council. The director of engineering at Frederick Seibert and Associates was hired to analyze the Moss Spring watershed, specifically as it impacted stormwater management.

Moore literally got down on hands and knees as he investigated some of the pipes running beneath the borough.

"You get some dirty knees sometimes," he admitted. He was surprised at how clean the culverts were, though. "They got fairly cleaned out in June. There was not much debris left."

He found pipes of all sizes, sometimes with large ones feeding into small ones. Some he could not find at all.

"Many of the pipes were installed by private property owners, so there is no record of them," he said. Some were put in in the 1950's when U.S. 11 was created, so he thinks it is time for an update.

Moore's investigation led him to make a recommendation to the council at last week's meeting. While there is some work that can be done to intercept water at West Madison Street before it runs down U.S. 11, the immediate concern is the culvert under Route 16 north of Hardee's.

He said the main problem is that the culvert is undersized. A 36-inch pipe flows into a two-foot by two-foot concrete box, which causes backwater. That section of Route 16 did flood during the severe rains in June.

One solution is to put in a 48-inch pipe. Such a project would take a couple weeks, and require a PennDOT permit. Council president Charles Eckstine favored a 60-inch pipe. Moore did state that the CVS store under construction on the north side of the road has an underground retention system that should be able to handle its own runoff.

Council authorized him to draw up plans for replacing the culvert with something larger. Council members will be speaking to PennDOT, which is scheduled to redo the entire road in 2008. The borough does not want to fund a project that could be PennDOT's responsibility. If the state will not fix the problem in two years, the borough will tackle it sooner.