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DUNCANSVILLE -- The borough's consulting engineer suggested at a recent meeting that Borough Council consider asking for money from the state's Hazard Mitigation program, should residents whose properties were damaged by flooding in the summer be interested.
The most common and best mitigation projects are buyouts, followed by demolitions to eliminate flooding risk and the need for repeated emergency repair allocations from the government, according to the Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency website and other sources.
Buyouts, followed by relocations of families and demolitions of their old houses were done on properties along Kentucky and Browning avenues next to Mill Run in Altoona during the last couple of decades.
PEMA is accepting applications for the program until mid-December, engineer Tom Levine told council.
The program pays for 75 percent of costs, he said.
"You'd be stuck with (funding the other) 25 percent," Levine said, adding he's not sure the borough could afford that match money.
The program is voluntary, so nothing would happen unless residents agreed to participate.
If the borough applies, it would have no guarantee of success, especially given that its application might compete with those involving much more damage or even loss of life -- which would mean the energy put into the effort would be wasted, Levine said.
Council didn't immediately respond to Levine's suggestion.
Since 1996, the program has relocated 3,500 people from 1,400 homes, according to the PEMA website.
In addition to buyouts, the program can fund home elevations and small flood control projects, according to the website.
The program seeks "cost-effective" projects -- those where, in the long run, the expense of a mitigation project is "less than the long-term costs of disaster recovery and repair for the project area," the website states.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency estimates that every $1 spent in the mitigation program saves $4, according to the PEMA website.
At the meeting, Levine passed along reports from eight families whose properties were damaged by flooding caused by two rainstorms -- one in early July that dropped 1.74 inches in less than 3.5 hours and one in early August that dropped 3.81 inches in less than an hour.
Basement flooding comprised a significant portion of the damages.
Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 949-7038.