MOUNT CARMEL -- Officials in Mount Carmel cut the ribbon Thursday on the completion of a project to keep Shamokin Creek within its banks.
Emily Homanick knows what it's like to live through a flood, or several floods.
"In two years, we were flooded like five times," Homanick said.
Homanick lives on Water Street in Mount Carmel. It runs along the Shamokin Creek and often floods when there's a lot of rain. Three years ago, ground was broken on the Shamokin Creek Flood Risk Management Project. And now the ribbon has been cut, officially symbolizing its completion.
The project involved making the creek deeper and installing concrete embankments. It will protect more than 100 houses from flooding.
"It has about a half mile of concrete channel like you see behind me. There's about a half a mile of earth and channel and then there's several hundred feet of earth and levee," Bill Seigel said.
The project cost $14.5 million, most of that coming from the state, and some from local taxpayer money. State officials helped make sure the funding went through.
"I went up personally and thanked them. Every one of them we shook their hand," Homanick said.
People who live along the project tell Newswatch 16 once they realized it was finished they took away their sandbags because the realized they don't need them anymore.
"It's all protected and it's all new. I think it would be good for the people," Mick Petroski said.
"It's been a project that's been pursued by the borough for over 30 years," Seigel said.
As for Homanick, she has plans for the next time there's a heavy rain.
"Sit here and smile. When it rains we say let it pour, we don't care," Homanick said.
