CLEARFIELD – The Lawrence Township Supervisors addressed a drainage issue at Tuesday night’s regular meeting. The board stated that the above surface drainage pipe is the responsibility of PennDOT to fix. A complaint about the pipe had come up at a Clearfield Borough Council meeting where Todd Kling blamed it for his basement flooding during heavy storms.
“We made a commitment to update the catch basin, and we will go through with it,” said Supervisor William Lawhead.
The initial complaint was a drainage pipe was at surface level and was overshooting the catch basin. Supervisor Glenn Johnston admitted that the pipe should have been tied in directly to the basin. Supervisor Edward Brown stated in the defense of whoever installed the surface level pipe that it was installed exactly like how the previous pipe was.
It was explained that after looking into the problem it was discovered sections of the drainage piping were last put in thirty years ago with steel pipe. After the decades the piping has collapsed. Lawhead stated that many of the catch basins along the road were also bad.
“They cut our liquid fuels from 20% to 12%, we don’t have the money,” stated Lawhead in explaining that the township can’t afford to fix the drainage along the road.
Lawhead stated that the road is a state road. He had looked into it and found that while boroughs and cities are required by state law to maintain the drainage systems for state roads under their care it didn’t look to be the case for townships. What he found was that the requirement was only a PennDOT policy, not a legal requirement. Township Solicitor James Naddeo agreed that the township wasn’t responsible.