Published: July 08, 2007 10:34 pm      

Faces of the Flood: '100-year flood protection'

SIDMAN — It was after 2 a.m. on July 20, 1977, and June Wissinger had been kept awake all night by thunder and lightning around her Mill Road home.

“I looked out and I could see a river going down the road,” Wissinger said. “Cars were just being carried away.”

She woke her husband, Gene, who waded into the home’s basement to cut the power. Then he went next door and did the same thing at Sidman United Methodist Church, where he was and remains a trustee.

The initial source of the 1977 Sidman and St. Michael flooding was a familiar one in Johnstown’s flood history: The South Fork of the Little Conemaugh River – where a dam had burst to cause the 1889 disaster.

Plans for additional flood controls along the South Fork after the 1977 flood were pushed aside for more pressing needs in hard-hit Johnstown, but help finally may be on the way.

The state Department of Environmental Protection has completed preliminary designs for an 8,000-foot flood control project through the area, project manager Andrew Reed said.

“This project will provide 100-year flood protection to the residents along the South Fork Little Conemaugh River, Otto Run and Topper Run in Adams and Croyle Townships,” Reed said.

The state will fund construction costs under a 1996 law authorizing the project, but Adams Township is required to obtain easements, or legal agreements, authorizing the work on private property. Some sheds or other structures will be removed by the township, as well.

Adams hopes to use its 2008 federal Community Development Block Grant funds for the preparations, township Supervisor Dennis Richards said. Officials have no cost estimates.

“We’re hoping (property owners) will work with us,” Richards said.

Richards credited Rep. Gary Haluska, D-Patton, with helping to resuscitate the flood control project. Previous designs became obsolete after funding shortfalls delayed the work for several years, but Adams supervisors pushed for action, Richards said.

“We went out (to the DEP) and they said, ‘There’s no problem doing it, but there’s no money for it,’ ” Richards said. “That’s when Gary (Haluska) went out and got us back into the program.”

Plans call for mounded levees of compacted soil along the South Fork, beginning 800 feet upstream, or south, of the Route 160 and Route 869 bridge in Sidman and continuing 8,000 feet downstream to the Topper Run confluence in St. Michael, Reed said.

The channel will be flanked with vinyl sheet-pile flood walls similar to concrete walls used in Johnstown. It will be the first time the material has been used locally.

“We’re going to try the vinyl,” Reed said. “The Army Corps of Engineers has been using them successfully in other areas.”

Topper Run in St. Michael and Otto Run in Sidman each will have 600 feet of concrete installed.

Work could begin as early as next year, Reed said. Cost estimates and a construction schedule will be included in the final design after federal and state permits are obtained and Adams Township acquires the necessary easements, Reed said.

June Wissinger said she welcomes the project.

Although the South Fork hasn’t threatened her home in 30 years, she remains wary during heavy rainstorms.

“I think they should do something for everybody,” she said, remembering flood control work on Solomon Run and other 1977 flood culprits.