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POTTSTOWN — The borough has received a second grant to repair and replace a crumbling stormwater arch between High and Queen streets.
The $140,000 grant will help pay for a new pipe-arch storm sewer that will have significantly improved hydraulic characteristics when compared with the current masonry box culvert. It will be made of aluminized steel for an expected useful life of 100 years.
The total project cost is $921,406, according to a press release from state Sen. Bob Mensch, R-24th Dist.
This latest round of funding came from a set of 130 grants from the Commonwealth Financing Authority for environmental and infrastructure projects, only 10 of which were designated for stormwater mitigation. In all, Pottstown received 6 percent of the entire state-wide funding package of $2.4 million for stormwater projects.
The arch, which runs beneath 1200 E. High St., an office building that was once Memorial Hospital, partially collapsed after a rainstorm on July 17, 2018, after the borough was deluged with 2.3 inches of rain on a single day.
This project was identified as an “Immediate Priority Repair” in Pottstown Borough’s 2021 Storm Sewer Arch Inspection Report. That report, funded in part by another $281,884 state grant, mapped at least 69 road crossings and documented arches and tunnels under 225 privately owned parcels in Pottstown.
As for the High Street storm arch, this latest grant is not the first grant for this particular project.
In April, a $500,000 state grant was announced by state Rep. Joe Ciresi, D-146th Dist. That funding came through the state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Program, a commonwealth grant program overseen by the Office of the Budget to assist with regional cultural, economic, civic and historical projects that improve a community’s economic growth by creating jobs.
“Pottstown’s network of arches are aging and failing, and the need to replace them is urgent. I am pleased to announce this state assistance to help cover the significant cost of these vital projects,” Mensch said.
That the borough’s century-old system of stone, brick and cement arches over the streams that once drained the land the borough is built on is no secret.
Borough Manager Justin Keller has identified it as one of the over-arching infrastructure challenges facing the borough. Pottstown has been on the forefront statewide in bringing the problem to the foreground and in obtaining state and federal funding to identify future problems and facilitate repairs.
The previously unseen issue first hit the headlines in 2003 when the arch beneath the zero block of Walnut Street began to collapse. In the end, it cost more than $800,000 to repair and replace and it took state and federal grants to cover the costs.
Ironically, the same problem happened again on the other just a few hundred feet away a few years later.
Repairs began earlier this month on an arch that collapsed in May, 2019 in the alley between the zero block of Walnut and Chestnut streets. It was further damaged during the July 11, 2019, storm and Manatawny Creek flood.
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