In Tuesday’s council meeting for February, Morrisville Borough Council President Helen Hlahol announced that the borough was awarded $212,600 for the design and engineering of relocating the existing wastegate to Trenton Ave, outside of levee limits, through a FEMA/PEMA Hazard Mitigation Grant.
Senior Project Engineer Jacob Brink of Gilmore & Associates said that there were two construction projects identified as part of the levee study: the backflow preventer on East Bridge Street and the relocation of the wastegate. Funding was already in place for the backflow preventer and now the wastegate relocation design funds have just been awarded. Gilmore is now working through the paperwork to get all the grant agreements for the project to officially launch.
Brink said the funds are for the design phase only.
The plan calls for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) to have an open grant application again for construction funds in the future in which applications will be submitted.
As for the project’s timeline, Brink explained that it’s a mix of state and federal funds so the grant agreements from PEMA and FEMA should be in place in the next two months.
More time is required because some additional survey work needs to be done, said Brink.
Ideally, it would take between eight and twelve months to complete the design. It was further explained that any submitted review processes will have to wait on PEMA’s and FEMA’s review. In order to reduce the number of homes on Park and Central Avenue, the borough must submit an amendment to the floodplain map once both of those construction projects are complete we would be able to move forward.
Williamson Park and some low lying areas would retain a little floodplain, but the majority of the floodplain would be removed from behind the levee, officials said.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) provided some comments regarding the emergency action plan for the levee, and it seems that the plan needs to be re-adopted. In addition, it can be submitted to FEMA to get initial accreditation for the levee and get it out of floodplain, said officials.
The call to motion to re-adopt the emergency option plan for the levee based on county comments was unanimously approved by council.
