WEST PITTSTON -- Three years after the Susquehanna River flooded West Pittston, residents are mounting an effort to get flood protection.
They want a levee like a lot of other nearby communities along the river have. They say they won't stop until their community gets one.
With signs reading, “Save Our Town” and “Levee Now,” a group from West Pittston is taking its message to the people.
At the River Commons along the banks of the Susquehanna River, West Pittston Tomorrow put the signs up as a "paper levee" -- one that symbolizes the need here for some kind of flood protection.
“In 2011 we had 859 homes and businesses that were inundated with water, and it took a severe blow to the community itself,” said West Pittston Mayor Tony Denisco.
After that, bewildered residents began looking for a way to prevent all the devastation from happening again.
“We're the only community along the Susquehanna River in the Wyoming Valley that does not have flood protection. Don't we matter here in West Pittston?” asked Ellen Quinn with West Pittston Tomorrow.
Proponents of a levee system in West Pittston say in order to save the community, the government should do something to keep any future floods from decimating the homes there, and ultimately, the tax base.
However federal, state, and county officials told residents there's not enough money for a levee.
“We feel in West Pittston that we've been abandoned by all three,” Quinn said.
So West Pittston Tomorrow plans to keep its volunteers doing research and will pressure public officials with signed petitions, all in an effort to keep their homes and hometown from having to face something like the flood of 2011 again.
“I don't know what exactly it's going to be six months from now, a year from now, but we're not going away. We're going to keep the pressure on. We're going to keep at it until we get a levee,” said Judy Aita with West Pittston Tomorrow.