Washington Township residents attend meeting after homes damaged by storm-related floods

Several residents described the severity of damages to their homes from the July 4 flooding.

Several Washington Township residents expressed their frustration with the lasting damage from Saturday’s storm flooding, as their homes sustained major damages to their homes.

During Wednesday’s board of supervisors meeting, residents sought answers and solutions to their flooding and sewage backup issues.

Rayann Dubinsky, one of the residents of the hard-hit area of Lynn Drive, described the damages sustained at her neighbor Mike Weston’s home.

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A view of Mike Weston’s flooded backyard and swimming pool is shown in Washington Township.

There is a ditch that runs behind his yard, which is from up above, like everybody’s water coming down. He was watching the ditch fill up, and once the ditch overflowed, he knew that he was done. The water just spilled down into his yard, as you can see in the picture. It just kept coming towards his house, blew out the door, blew out the window, and flew down again.”

A victim of flooding herself, Dubinsky has dealt with similar situations since 2017.

“I lost all my stuff years ago. Fourteen floods, and the last one was the big one, where I had four feet of water in my entire basement… like that.”

Dubinsky further explained what helped her prevent future incidents from happening in her own home.

“Once again, this water, spring water, flows into all these people’s houses and floods down. And that water goes into their basements, and goes down their drains. Where does it go when it goes to the drains? It goes in the sewage system. And then, people that aren’t getting surface water flooding, they’re not getting the sewage back up in their house, which was what I got. I am two houses away from the pumping station. I spent $7,000 to get an industrial-grade backflow preventer, so I stayed dry this time. Just because we haven’t had a big rainfall for years doesn’t mean that they don’t have to do anything. Obviously, they haven’t fixed anything.”

Dubinsky gave her ideas and suggestions to help residents now while waiting on additional aid from elsewhere.

“Help people with removal of all the stuff that they have thrown out. If you drive down Lynn Drive, there’s so much stuff. The garbage man’s not gonna come pick that up. They need to help people with that. I don’t know whether it’s FEMA or whatever, but just declare a disaster. Whatever to get funding. They need to look into getting grants to help our township get storm water removal in our area.

“They need to put those ditches back in. As people were saying, they need them. We need a groundwater system to get rid of everything.”

Bonnie Halinka, another resident from another area near the flooding, expressed how her brother-in-law sustained flooding damages.

“We were grateful that we didn’t have it, but my brother- in-law was there when we had a big party in the house. He went home, and he had a drain at the bottom of his driveway. It couldn’t take it all. It went into his garage, down his steps, and destroyed his water tank. So, yeah, a lot of my friends had raw sewage in their basements. Water in their basement. So, it’s been pretty devastating. We’re gonna have to figure out, and they’re gonna have to really take action this time.”

Halinka suggested a commonly-held need: deep ditches to hold excess water.

“I want them to start digging ditches. They need to dig ditches at the end of everybody’s property, and get the water flowing where it’s not currently flowing now. That’s my plan for them.”

Washington Township Solicitor David Tamasy addressed the needs of residents by assuring them that funding and other projects to help are being worked on continually.

“Right now, we’re applying for FEMA disaster relief money to help with some remediation efforts over Lynn and some other places. I don’t know how long that’s going to take for us to get that FEMA funding, because the process can take a couple of months, but hopefully they’ll expedite it for us given the circumstances.”

Tamasy urged citizens to be mindful of upcoming budget meetings, where funding to address repairs and existing and newly-sustained damages could be secured.

“When we begin our budget sessions in September and October, we’re going to be taking a look at the various areas that have been affected. There are some small projects that we heard about that we should be able to address how some of these individuals had plugged culverts and plugged pipes that we can immediately get to. Some of the ones where they’re saying that there is significant surface water, we’re probably going to have to be looking at USDA rural development money and similar things in order to construct a larger system to help funnel that water.”

While residents await help, new problems could arise in funding.

“Unfortunately, so many of these different brands require matching funds. For example, USDA rural will give us a much lower interest rate for projects. So, we may be able to take out a USDA loan so we won’t have to raise taxes. We would have the funds to do it and we can pay off the loan over time with a low interest rate.”

In the meantime, the residents are helping each other in the aftermath of the storm damage.