WILKES-BARRE-- Wilkes-Barre opened bids Thursday for an emergency repair job along Solomon Creek. City officials want the work done as soon as possible.
"There's concern, if anything does happen to the wall, you can have some major problems with the residents," said one man who lives nearby.
Repairing a crack in the wall along the creek is a high priority. The crack opened up two weeks ago where the creek runs along Brook Street.
Andy Reno lives in the neighborhood. He says homes and businesses around the creek were evacuated in January 1996, and several times since then, because the creek was no match for Mother Nature.
"It's pretty scary, especially when we get three, four, five inches of rain. It comes up relatively fast," he said.
But now the city put out a bid for an emergency repair job at the creek, and neighbors who live around it say they're happy to see the city taking action.
"Wilkes-Barre's doing whatever they could to get the funding to complete the project, and hat's off to them," Reno said.
"It's a necessity, it's extremely necessary, and we're doing it as an emergency," said Mayor Tony George.
The mayor contacted state lawmakers, seeking money to fix the crack. So far, he said, they've promised about $50,000. But the city may need three times that.
Mayor George says he's working on ways to get the rest of the money to fix the wall along Solomon Creek.
"It prevents flooding. Every heavy storm we got, it comes up to the top!" he said.
The city said the repairs would happen as soon as city council approves the lowest bidder.