STROUDSBURG -- One part of Stroudsburg is a lot cleaner now, thanks to some borough workers who weren't afraid to get wet and others knowing how to work a crane.
Over the years, the McMichael Creek in downtown Stroudsburg was getting clogged with trees and branches from past floods. Then borough and other crews used all sorts of equipment to clean the creek.
"I've never seen them use a chain saw under water before. That was a pretty spectacular job," said Tim Herd, Executive Director of the Stroud Regional Open Space and Recreation Commission.
Stroudsburg borough crews, along with crews from Papillon Contracting out of Stroudsburg, spent the morning hours removing a mass of debris from McMichael Creek.
"A couple of years ago, the flood waters caught a large tree, which in turn has been catching other flood debris all this time," said Herd.
So borough crews were called in to tackle some of the debris by water.
With life preservers on, the men would put a cable around the large trees. Then, the excavating crews would do the heavy lifting and carefully operate the crane and lift the trees out of the creek, into the dump truck.
"If that clog's large enough that it could hit the bridge, at some future point, then we'd have a larger problem," said Herd.