Jun 22, 2018 3 min read

A McDonald official said the borough “dodged a bullet” amid the heavy storm Wednesday night that sowed mayhem – and left a woman dead – in the Bridgeville area some six miles away.

“I think that storm went right around us,” said Marie Maximovich, the borough secretary-treasurer.

A spate of recent floods that hit some homes and businesses on Route 980 near the McDonald-Cecil line is bringing scrutiny to the Turnpike Commission construction project underway just outside the borough.

Locals said heavy rains started washing mud down from the site after work began there last year. The latest round of floods began June 8, when a rainstorm turned part of Route 980 into a creek-like channel of mud. Several more flooding problems were reported the following week.

A state Department of Environmental Protection report based on a June 11 inspection of the site by the Washington County Conservation District noted failures to implement and maintain “best management practices” for erosion and sediment, or E&S, control.

State Rep. Jason Ortitay, R-Cecil, said he believed additional measures put in place to control erosion and sediment at the construction site are working.

“I think at this point it’s important to realize they’ve made progress, but there’s still more work to be done,” Ortitay said.

In an interview Thursday and in videos on his Facebook page earlier in the week, Ortitay described a laundry list of measures the Turnpike Commission has completed or plans to put in place.

A major item was an access road near the bridge pier Ortitay said is being moved to allow for construction of a permanent retention pond that will catch most of the water that flows down the highway. He also pointed to additional drains and inlets to capture the water coming off the work site.

Last week, more than 60 people – including representatives from the Department of Environmental Protection and Turnpike Commission – attended a town hall meeting organized by Ortitay.

Ortitay said he believed the town hall had helped highlight the ways flooding problems were affecting residents and helped them to push state officials to do something about it. He said DEP and the Turnpike had staff on site Wednesday night to monitor the situation.

“DEP was on site last night, and I am told that the E&S measures did appear to be working,” agency spokesman Neil Shader said in an email Thursday.

Brad Heigel, chief engineer for the commission, said at last week’s meeting that officials were exploring several solutions to ease flooding and will implement a plan within a week-and-a-half to two weeks.

Turnpike officials didn’t return a request for comment Thursday.

Joseph B. Fay Co. is handling construction on the roughly three-mile stretch of the Southern Beltway from the Panhandle Trail to Cecil Reissing Road under a $90.6 million contract it executed with the state Turnpike Commission early last year.

Maximovich and Ernie Pusateri, a McDonald volunteer firefighter and president of the fire department’s trustees, said they received no reports of flooding from Wednesday’s storm. They also said the borough didn’t receive much rain.

“(There was) nothing unusual,” Pusateri said. “We lucked out.”