Venice in Bethlehem Tp

All Bethlehem Township needs are a few gondolas. Sharon Heisner and her neighbor, Scott Horning, have joined a growing list of residents who have attended Township meetings in recent years to complaint about stormwaters. She was at the July 18 Commissioners' meeting, and produced a video of raging stormwaters following a storm on July 8. It transformed Washington and 12th Streets into raging rivers that even gondolas would avoid.

Maybe kayaks would be better.

Heisner reports that her basement walls and floors are cracking because of the outside water pressure. She adds there is no catchment drainage system in her neighborhood. That neighborhood is located downhill from a mobile trailer park demolished in 2006 to make way for condominiums that were never built. She believes that drainage pipes were broken at that time, and contribute to the flooding.

Ironically, a few minutes before, Center Point Properties introduced sketch plans for an expansion at the YCR Freight Facility along Brodhead Road. Plans will increase the amount of impervious coverage beyond what is permitted by zoning. An engineer dismissed that problem as de minimis and something that could be achieved by "best management practices."

Noting that the Township has a stormwater problem, Malissa Davis suggested that Center Point should reconsider seeking a variance.