Another Dam, Bad Idea

There is an old adage that says that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The latest example of this is the dam proposed by Middletown Township in Bucks County to be built in the much smaller Langhorne Manor Boro on land Middletown Township owns.

Middletown Township acquired an 80 acre site when it bought a company called the Langhorne Spring Water Company. It's a beautiful wooded site on a sloping hillside that has been described as one of the largest remaining natural areas in Lower Bucks County. A stream, Chubb Run cuts through the rocks of the Piedmont Region here and splashes onto the soils of the Coastal Plains. This site is identified in the Bucks County Inventory of Natural Resources as one the top one hundred natural areas in Bucks County that should be preserved. It should also be noted that it's protected by a conservation easement that states " no building or structure other than those used for nature education or potable water purposes shall be built on the property".

Excessive development in the surrounding area including construction on stream floodplains has resulted in what local officials term "nuisance flooding" after heavy rainstorms. Those who built and now live on the floodplain demanded that local officials do something to stop the floodplains from flooding. The officials, and the engineers they hired looked around, spied a Township owned property and concluded that since it was not paved or built on it must be worthless and would be a good site for a dry dam.

The construction of this dam requires the destruction of a reservoir on the site, the removal of five acres of mature woodlands, filling in of wetlands and floodplains and the burial in an underground sewer over one hundred and fifty feet of Chub Run.

Now that the public is aware of the project the protests are coming in from all sides. Local watchdogs of government spending, Middletown residents, area environmentalists, the Audubon Society, the Bucks County Conservancy, and the Sierra Club, are all pointing out some of the many flaws in this proposal. The cost of the dam will be excessive and the benefits very few. Public confidence in our elected officials to protect our open spaces will disappear after they destroy this pristine open space that is protected by a conservation easement. A great spot to bring our schoolchildren to show them examples of science and nature will be destroyed. The list goes on.

This entire episode could have been avoided if only our elected officials and their bureaucrats had remembered their local history.

A few years ago the Bucks County Commissioners announced they were planning to destroy a local park to build housing for senior citizens. After the protests started and the heads were counted the Commissioners, a little bit the worse for wear backed off and the trees still grow in the park.

In the past year a large amusement park decided it would be building a new parking lot and petitioned the Pa DEP to allow them to bury a small stretch of stream which had the misfortune to run through the site of this proposed parking area. Once again the protests started and the management of large amusement park decided they really did not need the additional parking.

As over development continues and our open spaces and environmental resources become scarcer and scarcer they become dearer and dearer. Let hope our public officials and their bureaucrats have learned a lesson from this.

There is an opportunity here for the powers that be in Middletown Township to minimize the political fall out by scrapping this project and considering other courses of action without all the negative consequences of this dam.

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