Press release by Isabela Weiss with WVIA News on 19 February 2025

The Schuylkill Conservation District won nearly $75,000 to design plans to restore the Little Mahanoy Creek in Schuylkill County to a more natural state. Developers hope the project will lessen flood impacts and promote wild trout habitats in Frackville Borough.

Frackville resident Joe Huth remembers Hurricane Agnes. He fears his home at the foot of Broad Mountain wouldn’t survive a similar storm.

“No one understands water unless they deal with water, flood-water storms … I was alive for Agnes as a young boy. I watched the devastation … if we ever had another hurricane like that, we would be in bad shape,” said Huth.

The Little Mahanoy Creek borders his and six other property owners’ homes. In 2018, stormwater flooded into several homes, affecting around 30 residents. Huth didn’t own his Frackville home during Agnes, but he said his older neighbors often compare the 2018 flood to Agnes, which took 117 lives in 1972 in the U.S. and decimated much of the Wyoming Valley.

Flooding is the number one natural disaster in Pennsylvania – ranking above fire and raging winter storms. It can tear entire homes apart. The state Emergency Management Agency reports that a single inch of water can cause $25,000 in home damage.

The Schuylkill Conservation District in connection with Frackville residents secured a $74,151 grant to restore the northern portion of the creek to a more natural state. That grant, awarded through the state Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP), Growing Greener Plus Grant, finances projects to protect waterways from planting riparian buffers to cleaning abandoned mine sites. Conservation organizations, local municipalities and county authorities can all apply. Statewide awards for 2025 exceed $15 million, according to the department.

Northeast Pennsylvania received $902,000 from this round of funding. Nearly $300,000 to each will aid Schuylkill and Carbon counties.

Wayne Lehman, a natural resource specialist with the Schuylkill Conservation District is leading the Little Mahanoy project. This new funding will cover costs to design plans to reconstruct eroded river banks and restore floodplains and wetlands. Lehman estimates the project will take another four or five years to complete.

“We never can totally stop flooding … When you live along a stream or a creek, it’s going to flood. It’s what a stream naturally does what it wants to do,” said Lehman. “But what we’re trying to do is just lessen those impacts by trying to restore that creek to a more natural setting, which can be hard because … there’s a lot of impervious surfaces, a lot of stormwater runoff.”

The borough invested in upgrading its stormwater system in recent years to counter some runoff, but Lehman hopes this project will address where the creek was buried under development as Frackville grew. Excess water builds up in the headwaters of the creek.

“It kind of rips and tears as it comes out,” said Lehman.

Besides improving the stream’s structure, Lehman hopes the project will make the headwaters more habitable for downstream wild Brook Trout by clearing up the waterway.

Huth’s thrilled. He said he’s never seen fish in the waters by his home.

“I’m just so happy. I’m tickled about this. It will be nice. I don’t fish, but I do watch them. I look at them at times…I pity them because of what they’re in. It’s how things have washed in [the] sides, [the] banks – rocks, stones, trees,” said Huth.

The upper portion of Little Mahanoy is “not really anything to look at [today,]” said Huth.

Schuylkill’s conservation district is also getting an additional $236,375 for an agricultural project affecting the Upper Mahantango Creek.

Carbon County’s stream restoration projects

After 30 years of disuse, Silk Mill Run is getting a fresh start.

Besides removing five dams left over from when Silk Mill used to supply Jim Thorpe with drinking water, the grant will cover costs to build a riparian buffer along the creek.

Riparian buffers are strips of shrubs, trees and grasses that support local ecosystems and cool down the water by providing shade. They protect waterways from erosion and harmful runoff, said Kristie Fach, Wildlands Conservancy’s director of ecological restoration.

“Our riparian buffer serves a lot of purposes on both the land and the water … And then on top of that, when they’re native [plants], they’re also providing habitat for pollinators and other species … They’re stabilizing the stream banks. They’re providing habitat and also filtering to prevent pollution from getting into the stream,” said Fach.

Wildlands, a Lehigh Valley-based organization, supports environmental projects on the Lehigh River. As a tributary, wildlife and nutrients from Silk Mill feed into the river. The Conservancy is restoring its habitat with the Borough of Jim Thorpe, which owns the creek.

Borough President Greg Strumbinger explained that the conservancy approached the borough with the idea. Council leaped at it, he said. DEP had told the borough in a recent inspection that it needed to either fix its aging dams or tear them down.

“The dams were falling into disrepair,” said Strumbringer. But the dams still retained water and many were filled with silt. That made the river mostly inhospitable to aquatic life.

But more importantly, the dams are dangerous.

“Kids used to swim in them,” said Strumbringer. “And there was at least one fatality. I know that there was a drowning in one of the dams many years ago.”

Strumbringer expects the project to be completed sometime in 2026.

The county also received an additional $142,000 for the Carbon County Conservation District to restore Hunter Creek in Palmerton.

In this round of funding, the Pocono Northeast RC&D Council also received $300,000 for its Consortium for Scientific Assistance to Watersheds (C-SAW) program, which helps watershed organizations like conservation districts and local municipalities improve watershed stewardship.