“The Crossings Should Not Be Built in a Flood Plain” was the heading of a letter posted on Sept. 29. The following day, the county had a daylong deluge. A real estate broker in E. Hempfield Twp. was asked about the effects of the rain in the vicinity of the planned shopping center. She reported that Farmingdale Road, which is adjacent to The Crossings site, was closed all the way to Harrisburg Pike.
“If that center [The Crossings] ever gets built,” she predicted, “the water displacement has to be the biggest problem for the whole surrounding area.”
The Crossings will be built in a 90-acre flood plain. This land is now farmland. Farmland absorbs water, but what will happen when an area the size of 13 football fields is covered with concrete? The Conestoga Creek curves around two sides of the planned shopping center.
In 2008, Manheim Twp. Commissioners waived its own recently-adopted flood plain ordinance and approved the plan brought in by the engineers for the developers, High Real Estate Group. The developers’ plan allows construction closer to the banks of Conestoga Creek than would have been permitted by the MT ordinance.
The general area used to be designated a 500 year flood plain, but after Park City Center was built, that was changed to a 100-year flood plain. When The Crossings is built, will that be changed to a 50-year flood plain? 25-year? 10-year?
Referring to the Sept. 30 rainfall, this real estate broker wrote that “the entire county took a bigger hit than normal due to all the developing we are doing.”
“the entire county took a bigger hit than normal due to all the developing we are doing.” :
So the flooding in the city, in the undeveloped southern end and other places in the county were due to development and not the deluge of rain? You must be kidding. If my real estate broker made such an idiotic comment, I would find a new real estate broker pronto.
If development firms such as High Real Estate Group get what they want, the “undeveloped southern end and other places in the county” will not be “undeveloped” for long.