SCRANTON, Pa. — Some people in Scranton thought their perpetual flooding problem had been fixed until several inches of rain fell there Sunday night.
Al Young is an expert on flooded basements.
"We got a foot and a half in the basement this time."
The damage to his home on Wyoming Avenue in Scranton is not nearly the worst he's seen. He was hoping he'd never have to deal with this again.
"Here we are again. Every time it rains, it's the same old thing."
An underground creek runs through his and his neighbor's back yards. In 2018, the city of Scranton replaced part of the creek's culvert, calling it a temporary fix before the state Department of Environmental Protection could come in and replace the culvert for the full length of the creek.
The powerful rains on Sunday showed Young that the temporary fix isn't holding up; the water moved a piece of the concrete in his backyard.
"The contractor told me that top weighs seven tons, and that was lifted up over, I'm assuming, what I saw, about three inches. It was cocked about three inches with all the water and debris coming out," Young said.
The neighborhood in Green Ridge has been waiting decades for the state to step in and fix the creek. Now, Young is wondering how many more times he'll have to clean up a flooded basement before it does.
"The way things are running, I will probably be dead before they get to this point. I'm 80 years old now. It's been 20 or 30 years before they even started anything on this."
The city solicitor said that the last update from the DEP was in January. The agency said it was in the preliminary planning stages of the creek replacement project.