Export set to pay off flood-control project that helped dry out the borough

Export Mayor Joe Zaccagnini can remember watching his father’s 1957 Ford station wagon being picked up and carried off by Turtle Creek’s floodwaters in the early 1970s.

“My dad’s mother was being laid out at the funeral home, and he was leaving to take his aunt and uncle home,” Zaccagnini said. “The car started floating and they jumped out, and then the water just took it away.”

This month, the borough will make the last in a decade’s worth of payments for the flood-control project that finally helped residents rest a little easier — and stay dry — when the rainfall starts.

Export has experienced at least eight major flooding events since the early 1900s. It is bordered on three sides by hills. Turtle Creek’s headwaters start just north of Delmont, and from there it’s a downhill run straight through Murrysville’s White Valley neighborhood and into Export, where the creek bisects the town.

“When it flooded, the water from Turtle Creek would span all the way from Kennedy Avenue to Washington Avenue,” Export Council President Barry Delissio said. “Business owners on Washington would have sandbags stacked three high to try and keep it out.”

In 2007, a massive storm dumped between 2 and 4 inches of water on western Westmoreland County, sending 2 feet of floodwater rushing through the Dura-Bond steel fabricating plant near Turtle Creek and damaging 15 to 20 homes. When it happened again in 2009, borough residents and officials decided they’d had enough.

“People were scared,” Delissio said. “It reached the point where, if we had a bad storm, it could start flooding within 15 minutes. Council started putting calls out and (former Councilman) John Nagoda was a big advocate, trying to talk with anyone who would listen.”

Working with former U.S. Rep. Ron Klink, Export officials tried to gain attention and get the situation addressed. Klink initially tried unsuccessfully to get the creek dredged, and eventually the state Department of Environmental Protection proposed that its waterways bureau handle the project.

“They wanted to clean the sides, put rip-rap (stones) along the banks and then place a concrete channel through town,” Delissio said. “The Turtle Creek Watershed folks were really against putting concrete in there, but we kind of rebelled, because we’d spent a whole lot of money just to get to that point.”

The ultimate solution? Run a second creek underneath the town.

“They did some cleaning up above Dura-Bond and installed a concrete channel, so that if the water level rose past a certain point, it would flow into the channel,” Delissio said.

From there, it is conveyed under the borough through a series of massive box culverts, most of which are about 5 feet tall and 20 feet wide. They run parallel to Turtle Creek beneath the borough’s parking lot, with a series of grates for access. They are inspected annually by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

“They go in and walk the culverts to look for cracks, damage or other issues,” Delissio said.

All told, the project cost about $13 million. Next month, the borough will finish paying off its $1 million portion of the funding, freeing up a little more than $1,800 per month.

“A mill brings in about $5,000, so we’re talking about having four mills’ worth of additional money on hand,” Zaccagnini said.

Delissio and Zaccagnini said the project has been a big part of Export’s recent downtown resurgence.

“Without it happening, Dura-Bond would probably be gone, because their plant was flooding out every time the creek would overflow,” Zaccagnini said.

Eliminating that hazard also paved the way for the Westmoreland Heritage Trail to come through the borough, another development that has helped spur more activity downtown.

“Those last couple floods in ’07 and ’09 were really bad,” Delissio said. “And prices have gone up so much, I don’t know if we could even afford to do a project like that today.”