"The Morning Call Inc., Copyright 2002"
Date: THURSDAY, May 31, 1984
FLOODING WORSENS
SOME ARE EVACUATED AS THE DELAWARE SWELLS
by SCOTT BIEBER, JOE NIXON And TIM DARRAGH, The Morning Call
Residents of low-lying areas along the Delaware River in Bucks County were evacuated and sewage poured into the Lehigh River from overloaded sewer plants yesterday after a two-day downpour that swamped the Lehigh Valley and surrounding areas with more than four inches of rain.
Baptist ministers and their families stranded on an island in the Delaware at Bucks County had to be evacuated by helicopter.
Flood-control dams on the upper Lehigh River were being opened as the river downstream subsided from its peak flow Tuesday night.
The Lehigh, which had overflowed its banks Tuesday forcing the closing of Lehigh Drive in Wilson and Easton, was reported steady at 10 feet above normal at Easton late yesterday afternoon, four feet above flood stage. Northampton County Emergency Management officials said last night they expected the Lehigh to drop steadily overnight.
Lehigh Drive remained closed last night as did a portion of Route 611 from the Third Street bridge in Easton south to Cedarville Road.
Lower Saucon Township police said Riverside Drive near Steel City still was closed yesterday.
The Delaware River, which crested around 4 p.m. at Easton, was slowly receding and was reported at 23.60 feet at 8 p.m. in Easton, compared to 24.31 feet at 3 p.m. ''Crisis stage'' on the Delaware is 22 feet. At 2 p.m. the level was recorded at 24.28 feet.
Ronald Wood, chief of the Point Pleasant Fire Co., said yesterday the flooding along the Delaware in that area was ''the worst'' he had seen since 1955. Firemen began alerting residents near the river about noon. Scattered evacuations were made in the villages of Point Pleasant and Smithtown. Portions of River Road, which parallels the river in Bucks, were under three feet of water.
The Point Pleasant pumping station construction site, already inundated, was threatened with washout as the edge of the surging river crept closer, it was reported last night.
The National Weather Service at Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton Airport reported yesterday that 4.35 inches of rain fell since Monday. The total rainfall for May was a record 10.58 inches. The highest May rainfall recorded at the airport since 1943 was 6.74 inches in 1968.
Weatherman Charles Giannetta said the May precipitation ''was more like a hurricane month.''
The Lehigh Valley Hospital Center MedEvac helicopter assisted Bucks County's Erwinna firemen yesterday afternoon in evacuating 27 people from New Life Island in the Delaware at Tinicum Township. The stranded people were Baptist ministers and their families who apparently were meeting on the island. Several people who live on the island remained, said a MedEvac spokeswoman. The evacuated people were dropped off at Tinicum Park.
The Allentown and Bethlehem sewage treatment plants could not handle the huge flows of sewage and water coming in from water-logged sewer lines and had to bypass the plants by discharging some of the sewage directly into the Lehigh. The State Department of Environmental Resources was notified of the bypasses, which are standard procedure whenever they are necessary.
Discharges at the rate of 30 million gallons a day were flowing from sewer lines into the Lehigh next to the Allentown sewage plant for the past 24 hours, said Harry Bisco, city public works director. About 70 million gallons a day flowed through the plant, where it received only primary treatment before it was dumped into the Lehigh.
At the Bethlehem treatment plant, about 15 million gallons a day of untreated sewage bypassed the plant and went directly into the Lehigh. Another 15 million gallons a day was being treated by the plant, said a city official.
Such overflows are common at many city sewage plants during flooding conditions, local and state officials say.
In Bethlehem-area municipalities, the largest problem seemed to be telephone troubles, not flooding.
Walter Minniear, community relations manager for Bell of Pennsylvania, said the company received about 200 reports of cable trouble because of the wetness. During a normal workday, he said, repair crews receive about 15-20 reports of cable trouble.
Minniear also said that most of the wet cables did not hold large numbers of ''pairs.'' He said one pair is used per connection.
When it rains heavily, the dampness causes static in connections between calls, and, in worse cases, prevents connections from being made, he said.
Finding the wet cables takes time, he said.
''You have to find the cable and isolate it,'' Minniear said. ''Some (of the cables) are in the air, some are in the ground.''
Repair crews were working 12-hour shifts to dry out the cables, he added.
Saucon Valley High School Principal Carl Morrison said his school was one of the victims of a telephone blackout.
''We were completely without communication for about 4-5 hours,'' he said.
Morrison reported that telephone service gradually was restored between noon and 1:30 p.m.
Before that, he said, he called the State Public Utility Commission, the office of U.S. Rep. Don Ritter, R-15th District, and the Lower Saucon Township Police Department.
''This has been a problem ever since the high school was built,'' Morrison complained. ''Every time it rains, we either lose it all or have static.''
He said he was concerned because, ''What do I do if we have a major emergency?''
Morrison added that, during the time the telephones were not working, Leithsville Fire Co. personnel kept a two-way radio system on stand-by for the school.
Other areas in the Lehigh Valley also experienced varying degrees of telephone service disruption, but there were no reports of ''anything serious,'' Minniear said.
The flood gates on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Francis E. Walter Dam on the upper Lehigh River were opened halfway yesterday at about 7 p.m. The lake behind the dam was about 70 feet above normal but still about 100 feet below the spillway on top of the dam, said Capt. Ron Janak, the northern area corps engineer in charge of the dam. The dam was releasing about 4,000 cubic feet a second. Maximum release is 8,000 cubic feet a second.
The smaller Beltzville Dam on the Lehigh was releasing about 1,420 cubic feet a second, near the maximum, Janak said. The lake behind the dam was about 20 or 30 feet below the spillway.
Officials from the corps or the Delaware River Basin Commission could not estimate how much flooding the dams prevented downstream.
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"WEATHER BY GIANNETTA"