Canton Township businesses, residents lament repeated flooding along Chartiers Creek
Business owners and residents living near Chartiers Creek in Canton Township are fed up with the regular flooding that happens in the area during heavy rainstorms.
People were cleaning up their properties Friday morning after torrential rain Thursday night dumped as much as four inches of water in portions of Washington County, according to the National Weather Service in Pittsburgh.
The 800 block of Henderson Avenue appeared to receive some of the heaviest flooding, which people in the area say has become a recurring problem that they want to be fixed.
Chris Potts, who previously operated Tower Golf and Amish Touch in South Strabane, owns a building at 852 Henderson Ave. where he keeps some of the items from those businesses. He estimates that this is the fifth or six flood over the past two decades at the location, including the worst one in 2004, when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan forced him to tear down the previous building at the site and construct the current one.
“The county’s got to address the issue of Chartiers Creek,” Potts said, hoping that crews can remove debris from the waterway and produce a better flood mitigation plan.
Potts was thankful that no one was injured or killed from the flooding, but he said the damage to buildings in the area is taking a toll. He pointed to an area by the floorboard in the entranceway that already has the drywall cut so they can easily replace just that section when it floods.
“It is what it is,” Potts said. “It’s just devastating. It’s mind boggling where to start.”
Washington County Board of Commissioners Chairman Nick Sherman, who toured the flooded areas Friday, said county officials are in communication with Congressman Guy Reschenthaler’s office to discuss a regional flood plan study. While there is no timeline on when the study would be implemented, he said the county would coordinate with the state and federal governments to go “township by township and community by community” to alleviate flood-prone areas along Chartiers Creek.
“We’re looking at that designed flood plan to see if we can fix it. It’s a very complex plan. If you fix it in Chartiers (Township) and fix it in Canton, then you’re kicking the can down the road and people downstream would get flooded twice as bad,” Sherman said.
Kimberly Scalise, who is the program supervisor at SPHS CARE Center Crisis Services located on the other side of Potts’ building, described how the water came in “very fast” starting around 8 p.m. The crisis center has accommodations for clients to stay overnight, and four people had to be evacuated from the facility as the floodwaters inundated the center.
“Really, our main thing was to make sure everyone was safe and follow the evacuation plan,” she said.
She contacted a restoration company to fix the damage inside the building, and while that location will be closed for the foreseeable future, SPHS CARE has another center at 75 E. Maiden St. in Washington, along with two other locations that will be able to support people in need.
“This will not set back services,” Scalise said.
In that area are numerous mobile homes located at Washington Estates, where emergency responders had to perform water rescues with boats to get 50 people from their residences. Sherman said about 20 cars in the neighborhood were damaged by the flooding, although fortunately the mobile homes were high enough off the ground to avoid being inundated with water. Some of the people who were displaced by the flooding stayed overnight at the Canton Township Volunteer Fire Company, which set up a makeshift shelter at its Weirich Avenue station.
Kojaks Auto Body at 849 Henderson Ave. sustained some of the worst damage from the flooding, with its owners posting photos and videos on social media showing a couple of feet of water inside the building with several vehicles partially submerged.
“We’ve got a lot of stuff to do,” owner Barry Kovatch said while he and other workers were going through inventory to determine what could be salvaged and what must be discarded.
Kovatch was unsure of the amount of damage done to the shop and the several cars that were inside at the time of the flood. The water that inundated the building left behind a thick layer of mud on the shop room floor, prompting workers to use hoses to wash away the muck in order to reopen the business.
“We were here all night,” Kovatch said. “We’re just trying to get cleaned up some so we can use the place.”