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Conversations and rants about Civil Engineering with Denny Howell, P.E.
Alright. Welcome back to episode 15 of the Bearded Engineer. And then I'm Denny Howell, bearded engineer. And today, have mister Robert Schuck who we met a little we met in well, you can talk about how we met and tell us a bit about about what you do.
Speaker 2:We oh, my name is Robert Schuck. I I'm actually your neighbor across the other side of the reservoir, and that reservoir is what brought me here today to talk about its future. Yep. I've lived here in Westchester since 2005. You were, as we were just discussing, part of the original worked with the builder to build my house and develop my neighborhood.
Speaker 2:And we've spoken in the past about deck improvements and things in the back of our house that we ended up doing a few years ago.
Speaker 1:I think you should be able to do without an engineer, by the way. You really shouldn't just be able to just do it. So that's another topic.
Speaker 2:The fact that one guy did all the work was insane by himself. Included trusses in the whole nine yards, but just did the whole thing by himself. But, you know, I'm the owner of Northpointe three sixty, which is a small office here in Westchester, Downtown Westchester. I'm a little bit of a unicorn in that I'm a licensed realtor in residential real estate. I'm a licensed mortgage broker and a licensed insurance broker.
Speaker 2:Which is nice. Yeah. They don't exist. Nobody exists in the world, but we're able to offer all the services. Been in business for about fifteen years and moved to Westchester, like I said, in 'five, originally from Montgomery County.
Speaker 2:I'm a graduate of Villanova University. I have a wife, Chrissy, who owns her own marketing company, also called Northpoint Media.
Speaker 1:That's where I know Northpoint from. So I looked them I looked, you know, I was doing some doing some quick research and I dealt with Northpoint Media way back in the day. Oh, really? Way back in the day. Were they down like in in East Whiteland or No.
Speaker 2:We had an office in Wayne In Wayne. Till about 2021. My wife opened it. My wife was always with a company called Harmelin Media, which was in Yep. Ballard Kenwood, if you're familiar with it.
Speaker 2:And then when we had kids, she came home. And then when they went to school, she returned to workforce and rather than going out and getting a job and commuting along with it, let's just start your own thing so we're all yeah, small business owners and
Speaker 1:I think they did some marketing Some marketing,
Speaker 2:yeah, they might.
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna talk about it. There's a picture of me that I'm not gonna it's not that was bad just I made fun of for years of me like in my my signature sweater vest Okay, sitting in front of this barn. I don't know who orchestrated it up, but it goes around every now and then I try to keep it
Speaker 2:and what she does. She does a lot of building of online presence versus social media, Facebook business, marketplace, Google, all the Instagram, everything that creates it, then she creates the content and schedules it and does everything from that standpoint.
Speaker 1:Back then, it was really no line presence really. We were just kind of getting going. I was still mailing out three by five postcards of things that we did yeah to random people like I would go through Chesco views and see if you had a floodplain on your property yeah and then I would mail you a little flyer about you know before you get in flood insurance give us a call we can study the floodplain try to get your house out of That was the marketing back then.
Speaker 2:That's, you know, at the shore right now, it's the big thing we need with a lot of the flood is the elevation certificate.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Oh, yeah. We do a lot of those.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so we've been here for a long time. I actually was just your name just came up last week. I was talking to Bob Blue.
Speaker 1:He's a good man.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He told me to tell you that I called him about a 100 acre data center.
Speaker 1:Data center? Told me he was going be lunch.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I'll definitely will. We called him about a property up in Gwinnett Valley that we have listed that can subdivide a lot off and sell the original house. In the way it's currently set up now, it wasn't Bob took my call and I just happened to just search the name of the company. I did the subdivision for the guy years and years ago.
Speaker 2:Bob's came up, so I called him and he's like, Well, we'll help you for it. And he mentioned you. And I said, I'm going on his podcast
Speaker 1:Ran this
Speaker 2:into Matt Thompson last week. I said, I'm going on your podcast. So your name kept popping
Speaker 1:up That's this working out. I gotta drag Bob Lou down here for a podcast sometime.
Speaker 2:Oh, you should. Yeah. He's an interesting guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he is. I know.
Speaker 2:We did I saw his name years ago. Worked when I was in high school, I worked for a guy named Frank Palopoli and Jim Kohler at Vestera Corporation. They were a big land development. They did shopping centers through Montgomery County and Eastgate here in South Jersey and just big projects. And, you know, I always saw Mr.
Speaker 2:Blue's name on everything that came over.
Speaker 1:He's Mr. Montgomery County, for sure.
Speaker 2:Oh, definitely. Yep. Oh, yeah. So it was nice to finally actually speak to him on the phone and kind of give him a little, you say your name everywhere.
Speaker 1:And he's, you know, he's there every day. He's answering the phone every day. Calling me. Yep. Call me, you know, in the evening and in the morning.
Speaker 1:Yep. He's still at it. He's going hard.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this is it's nice to finally actually dive in to see what you guys do. And what just walking in the office, know, the size and scale of this place is really Yeah. It's impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like I said, I see your see your trucks and your branding everywhere. And, you know, you know, somebody who grew up, you know, in Blue Bell, Bob Blue is effectively Yeah. Denny Howe of Montgomery County. Right. But I I never saw the the presence that you guys have here.
Speaker 2:And I think that, you know, one of your podcasts I was listening back to talked about younger people entering things and the older people kind of moving out and when you got in the last since about 2016 what I've noticed about the construction business and your business is that younger people like yourself, you're
Speaker 1:technically younger. I wish I was younger.
Speaker 2:But you are right? Like, you you think you started the business in the '90s and that you guys set the level of professionalism in residential construction or in commercial construction that wasn't there in the '80s. I remember being in Lower Gwyneth growing up in the '80s and builders running around. In fact, house that built our house, funny story, the guy three guys on motorcycles showed up probably a year or so after we moved in. This is like 1983.
Speaker 1:Like the money pit, right?
Speaker 2:Like the money Exactly. The money pit is the best description of Two weeks. Contract. You had two weeks. Two weeks.
Speaker 2:Certec or Servec. Think I had Al Servec. Servec. But that's the short of our house, looking for the builder, looking for money. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, so it was never as professionalized as you guys have made it recently. And I would say in the last ten to fifteen years, you just noticed custom trucks, custom branding, custom golf shirts. Yeah. Very profession everything's very professional.
Speaker 1:We try. We try.
Speaker 2:I I think it's part of the the you know, I think it's a part of the reason why people know the difference between builder a and builder b is that the reputation and the online stuff backs it all up, whether it's Instagram accounts or reviews and stuff like that. So, you know, it's interesting what you've done here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's funny. John Hubicchi was getting you set up in here when he first started with me. And it was like maybe like 2001, he did websites. And so he comes in and he's like, I can do a website.
Speaker 1:And we're like, John, only nerds who go to websites. We don't need a website. We have the yellow pages, right? Why do we need a website? I pay for the yellow pages.
Speaker 1:Like, let your fingers do the walking. I have my name in there. But he did. And looking back now, hindsight, we were so lucky that John came along when he did and that we did a website kind of when we did. We kind of get like the domain name.
Speaker 1:You know, now if you're gonna start some company and your name is, you know, Smith or you're a paver, good luck getting any kind of a website at all that even resembles your name. It comes up with something crazy. Even today, we still always have different ideas of things I want to do, and I'm trying to, like, get other domain names, like locked down on.
Speaker 2:Well, mean, the yellow pages are the is the Google Google Business.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Right. Google My Business. And when you have I have multiple businesses. I have Northpoint three sixty, which is the parent company, and then it owns Northpoint Lending, Northpoint Insurance, Northpoint Real Estate, and in Northpoint Media.
Speaker 1:Yeah. But when you go
Speaker 2:to your Google business, you know, they've locked one account up. They, oh, let's see. Another business is already located here, and it's you can't fix it.
Speaker 1:You can't fix it.
Speaker 2:Think the only way you can do it is start to buy ads. And once you get a rep Exactly. Be able to have somebody like that fix it for you. But if you've reviews on one of the companies, they're lost until it's released at a suspension.
Speaker 1:We can we can touch on Rezord in a second but just back to the marketing thing because I do love marketing and we own we own partners at a marketing company in Westchester as well so that's why you see our presence trying to do the things that we do. But interestingly, when we did all this, none of it was really shouldn't say mean, was none of it was done deliberately to get more work. It was actually to be able to hire better and to look better to the team that we've been trying to build and to the in our business, in engineering especially, in surveying, it is very difficult to attract people. Very, very difficult to do it. And their recruiters are relentless as private equity, as the smaller firms kind of just get pushed away, and PE comes in, and some of these larger firms that have a couple thousand people.
Speaker 1:We're small. We have 140 people here. It's small in relative terms. Back in the day, 15 was the standard. But we're still small in competition for looking for the best people, for best engineers, best surveyors.
Speaker 2:Yeah, heard you mention you're going to open an office downtown to try to attract the people out of Drexel's or other engineering programs and I would tell you that makes sense.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it and really a lot of it goes towards the fact that which is something I've touched on here a million times is that we can make a lot of hires, but the younger engineers, even though they might get out of school making 75,000 a year or better or 80 maybe, they can't afford to live in Westchester or Chester County or they So don't want a lot of them are like, hey, I'd love to work there, but I've got to drive an hour from where I am living. But they would go to the city all day long. So yeah, we're starting the city up and when in our new building that's down the street, we hired a chef. I hired like a corporate chef. So we're gonna have a chef in the office, make breakfast, make lunch for the guys like me tonight.
Speaker 1:I have a township meeting, make like a little to go dinner. Yeah. So I can eat something before I go because I get I get like noticeably hangry. I'm hungry and I don't get to eat and I gotta go to Township Building till 09:30 at night so
Speaker 2:Well if you go into any these offices in New York City or you know whether it's the Bloomberg offices or something like that I mean you go in there's a full service cafeteria same with everything out in San Francisco Los Angeles you know happier employees if you're feeding them. Yeah. And you're just more productive. Yep. But I like the idea that you go downtown to find the talent because right now, the conversations I'm having with people, especially other business owners, is that the current economy and the strength of the dollar is rewarding job hoppers.
Speaker 2:Yes, agreed. If you start a job, the people who are switching jobs right now are keeping up with the value the dollar valuation. And whether it's best for them or not, that's yet to be determined. But, you you can no longer give raises to people up to 6% if we're gonna continue to move at this It has to be larger. Much.
Speaker 2:Sums are have bonuses, year end bonuses that are much more lucrative that says, Yeah, we understand that your dollar that you put in your pocket in 2002 and you saved it, it's really only 50¢ when you pull it out right now.
Speaker 1:It's driving the cost of everything up just the way that it's gonna go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't know how you guys do it. I may hear some of the talking about years and years of planning and how you even budget for it.
Speaker 1:It's impossible.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean it's You
Speaker 1:know, my clients would they want to hit me over the head here, but the unfortunate reality because of the way that the projects change, the scrutiny that it goes through is that on a large project, by the end of that job, when everyone has a look back, right? So a client's like, Hey, Denny, wanna go through these last invoices. That's when they go through and they have the proposal that we wrote two, three, four years ago. And then they have their total billings that we've billed them next to it. And it isn't even close.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's a factor. It's often three, four times and like how do you sit there and try to defend that? I mean, we can go through the extras in a time. But it's just if I built your deck over four years, no matter what, it's just gonna just by doing it so inefficiently and that long, it's just so expensive. I beat this drum all the time, but I don't I do not see there's no end.
Speaker 1:It will not change. Unfortunately, it will not change.
Speaker 2:I I tend to agree that it's it's an old way of thinking how this economy used to work where, know, you we want to keep this person working or we won't have this person that does engineering.
Speaker 1:We won't
Speaker 2:have it. So everything gets drawn out. And, you know, I say the same thing with real estate. You know, to buy and sell a house right now through state run contracts, it's easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But if you go to New Jersey, there's a lawyer lobby that keeps lawyers involved in the transaction.
Speaker 1:Right. New York State does the same thing.
Speaker 2:Same thing. And the lawyer lobby is so strong that they create these hurdles to keep everybody working. You're like, well, is that what's good for the group as a whole? Or is it, no, this could be scaled back a little bit?
Speaker 1:Good luck doing that. You can't really unring
Speaker 2:them You've fight the lobby.
Speaker 1:Right. Exactly. I mean, New York also requires you, which we don't really this is not a bad idea, but they require that any time a piece of residential property changes hands any property you have to have it resurveyed the boundary of it. Which actually not trying to get everybody to survey the property but it is a good idea. People don't know and I'm surprised the banks don't get involved because they're lending money.
Speaker 1:You you think that they want to know like is the house over the setback line? Is the neighbor's driveway on the property line? You think that they would want to know that? I'd want to know it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Especially for the cost of not that much for a little residential survey. Yeah, but I mean, you know, we do it when we do like an Alta survey for a commercial loan We do a phase one for that too So you think that that will be a box that they would that the lenders would like to check
Speaker 2:Well, we do we have an off I have an office in Purdy real estate down in Avalon and So we do majority of work in Stone Harbor and Avalon CIL and they're all postage stamps Yeah, but every deal down there has a survey on it Yeah, Even though it's postage stamp because that person shed might be over or that fence might be over and somebody just didn't do it right and you have to get them
Speaker 1:done Yep. Or the docks were built differently or they were added to. I know.
Speaker 2:Well, surveys is really what started the reservoir Yes. Right. And I think we should get into that because, you know, I'm here to learn and I want you know, I have neighbors and we have an HOA that's been around for a long time and gotten updates from one of the neighbors who's going to meetings and contacting congresspeople and, you know, I think that I think we could all learn from even just by listening to few of your podcasts just how long it does take for people or even corporations like Aqua PA to do things
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Like what we're hearing. But, you know, it all started with a rumor on Facebook that the dam was failing. Yeah. So the first question I have for you is, is the DAM failing? Take all the DAM Yeah.
Speaker 2:Pictures you
Speaker 1:And I can answer it pretty easily by saying I don't know for up like yes or no. However, and I just was at last Thursday was the fifty year anniversary for Gary Smith at the Economic Development Council.
Speaker 2:So it
Speaker 1:was up at the foundry. Some of our commissioners actually all of our commissioners were there. Some supervisors were there from West Goshen Township, but I had the opportunity to kind of bend some ears and talk about this. But I also I've sat on the board of the Chester County Water Resources Authority for probably close to eighteen years now and been past president of it. So our we are tasked with overseeing all of the dams in Chester County that not being one because it's owned It's owned by Aqua which previously was the Westchester area Municipal Authority, which was the water authority and sewer authority for Westchester
Speaker 2:Okay,
Speaker 1:And then when it became Aqua, Aqua stopped using it for water supply. Yeah. But we at Water Resource Authority, we oversee the Struble Dam, oversee Beaver Creek, we oversee Hibernia Dam, which is unique because it's not only flood control, it's also recreation, and it's also water supply for Pennsylvania Americans. So this reservoir is not used for anything. It was like I, you know, I've bent the ear of my executive director there before saying like the county should make this an amenity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Like it would like we should have a Marsh Creek of Westchester.
Speaker 2:Oh,
Speaker 1:yeah. This could be it. You know, looking at it as an untrained, I'm not a damn engineer, but I don't see any seeps. It may be getting towards the end of its useful life It does that doesn't not mean that there are not steps that can be taken that that that impoundment area is just lowered a little bit and then it's then it's completely fine Right. There's lots of ways of saying that a DAM is failing not that I want to say Aqua's not being accurate, but to me, it's like saying the day after you put on a new roof that your roof is failing or your septic system is.
Speaker 1:I mean, is, but it's going to be gone in like thirty five or forty years.
Speaker 2:Right, eventually. Yeah. Strict on that.
Speaker 1:So I've never seen anything on that. I've never seen anyone out there repairing a seep in that dam. Like the county has repaired seeps in our dams and they're mostly earthen dams that we've got except for maybe one is concrete. But there could be a lot of things that could be done that could make it very like a very cool amenity for Westchester a very cool one
Speaker 2:Oh definitely I mean the issue I think that happened with the Facebook and social media which was a whole other well, you know, I didn't even get out of control on social was that the terms were used drain the reservoir and sell it, which I think a lot of people took that as it was gonna get back filled and you know, there was gonna be a new Toll Brothers development there or townhomes there or commercial or a data center, whatever, fill in the blank.
Speaker 1:It is zoned residential. It actually is. It's R3.
Speaker 2:But what would again, we talk about economic feasibility, how long that would take. That seems like something that and, again, looking for your to answer this question would be such a I mean, Toll Brothers couldn't get homes built on krill billy.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:How would somebody with deep enough pockets as as a Toll Brothers say, yeah, we're gonna bring it the first of all, the water would have to be rerouted because it is a part of the the the watershed. Right? The the Chester Creek Watershed. Yep. And and then also, have to backfill it and either bring it up out of the floodplain or the marshes that are back there can't be built on.
Speaker 2:So the question would be what would even be economically feasible to fill in and develop on
Speaker 1:top Well, and there's still a stream in the base of it. Like when you remove it, there's still a stream flowing down through there. There will still be wetlands associated with it. There will still be a wetland buffer associated with it. So it's never going just go away.
Speaker 1:Right. There is, you know, like I, you know, the dam was built for water supply and obviously it has an element of flood control for downstream. I mean, we come out here all the time and it rains hard. There's certainly a contingent in the at the department at the state level that there's truly no shortage of people who don't like dams from the standpoint of fish can't swim upstream. There's other drawbacks of it.
Speaker 1:It doesn't have a fish ladder. I've got you know, I've had board members in the past that were on our authority that even though we were in charge of dams, maybe some of their views were that maybe this dam is not really needed. Obviously, like I said, we touch on three things. We're either the dam's either there for flood control or it's there for recreation or it's there for water supply or in the case of Hibernia, it's all three.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:In this case, it's really one and a half. I don't know how much flood control it's providing. I mean, it is providing flood control just by where it's at but there's not like a city down below this this dam it was intended for water supply back in the day and used by Westchester area municipal authority but not used now right and it's not used recreation but yeah, well that's fantastic. I mean it could be the West
Speaker 2:I mean that's I
Speaker 1:want to get I
Speaker 2:want to get into that section for because that's kind of where you know I think part there was a letter that went out on on May 5 was it May 15? Yeah, May 15 and before that like I said we saw stakes in the ground the neighbors got really concerned Yeah, that this was rumor was spreading through and what the truth of it was was that aqua PA was actually the process of merging Yes. Part of the merger was all the land that it owned had to be surveyed. Right. Right?
Speaker 2:So that's why the stakes were in the ground. Yep. The merger was announced, you know, dollars 40,000,000,000 deal. Now we're starting to get more communication from Aqua PA, but really, it's a new owner, Right? It's at American what is it?
Speaker 2:Essential utilities is now what it's called. American Water.
Speaker 1:Yeah. American Water.
Speaker 2:Headquartered in Camden. Yep. Is is is now the owner of that dam. And what they have to figure out is what do they wanna do with it? So that letter came out on May 15 and the first thing I noticed when I read it I do have a copy of
Speaker 1:it here I don't have any
Speaker 2:of the
Speaker 1:stuff so I'm glad to learn it right now
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, was that they, you know, proposed the plan down drawdown Fern Hill Reservoir, which a drawdown because they're in control of it, they're allowed to do. Just means they're gonna release the water out of it. But they understand the surrounding areas enjoyed by the community they wrote in the letter. Now, I've talked to people, older people than me that said, oh my god, we used to fish in that reservoir. And, you know, in my twenty years, they all they've done and they've been great neighbors, Aqua, but they've replaced the fence for us.
Speaker 2:They put a nice new fence in. Yep. They also replaced the fence here along Airport Road every time a car goes right through.
Speaker 1:Exactly, which is pretty often.
Speaker 2:Pretty often. And the You know, they've had pretty strict because, know, from our standpoint as a neighborhood up on the hill, seeing that reservoir from the street is a nice view, but it is overgrown. There are vines. We've asked their arborists about cutting it back or cleaning up the site. The arborist for Aqua has said no.
Speaker 2:No. It's got to stay untouched, un Yep. You know, unencumbered, I say to Right. So to speak. So, you know, it's interesting that they say that we know the area is enjoyed by the community when the truth, you know, really that it's not yet.
Speaker 1:It's not yet.
Speaker 2:But but like you're saying, it could be, and I actually think it it actually could be as well. But the the reason that they wanna get rid of it, it says, It's an extensive investment to satisfy Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's current spillway capacity requirement. Yeah. So they're effectively saying, It's not the dam is failing. Yes.
Speaker 2:Somebody in the state is proposing it to be modernized or brought up to some sort of code.
Speaker 1:That's what I was gonna get into.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's what that's what that's so like the rumors online everything about it failing.
Speaker 1:It isn't that the embankment or the impoundment is failing and we've and we through the county have gone through similar exercises for some of our dams
Speaker 2:Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Where there was a probable maximum flood. And so my board members will hear this podcast and probably critique me, but there's a probable maximum flood that's different than the one hundred year storm. There have been independent, like, rain gauge measurements taken in the state, and we have to design to this PMF. And in our world, so if you get an idea of, like, a two year storm frequency is 3.2 inches of rain in twenty four hours. A hundred year storm is 7.2 inches of rain in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1:All the flooding that we've seen in the last five years has been a result of not as much rain, but we're getting a lot of rain in a much shorter period of time. So when everyone's like, a hundred year storm happens like every year. It's like, But it really doesn't.
Speaker 2:Like tropical storm Lee.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but what's happening is we're getting these large cloud bursts and we're getting this not 7.2 inches of rain, but we're getting like five, but instead of getting it in twenty four hours, we're getting it in like an hour, which ends up, you know, if you ran the math, it's like a five hundred year storm. So this PMF storm is, I believe the last one that was measured was 27.2 inches of rain in a twenty four hour period, which would be I've done some research. It's almost meteorologically impossible to happen unless an actual hurricane were to just sit in Park over the the top the which it can happen. Biblical. Yep.
Speaker 1:But obviously, if you apply 27 inches of rain to any facility that exists in this county, it's going to be failing. It's
Speaker 2:not Yeah, going one can handle it.
Speaker 1:Done expansions of the counties that are taking expansions of our existing dams from a spillway standpoint, an emergency spillway standpoint. That has a primary spillway and it has its regular spillway. I'm gonna guess that just based on experience that that's what they're getting at is that that that concrete step spillway is not wide enough. I mean it does in a big big rain. It's it's raging.
Speaker 1:It's almost overtopping and frankly, it's almost overwhelming the culvert that then is under Airport Road. Yeah, I've seen a fall down below. Yeah, the Hooftsburg
Speaker 2:Bridge, know, a couple years ago and the flooding goes all the way back on the Meadow Drive and comes on back in that marsh behind East Fields. Whole thing's a floodplain. Some of the houses we have done deals with back there, we flood insured on the back end of that.
Speaker 1:I was at the function at the EDC a week and a half ago and speaking with some elected officials, not county but in the township level. I was just saying, it would be interesting to have a dam engineer. We use Gannett Fleming in the county. They're highly experienced. Gannett's done all of our dams for as long as I can even remember.
Speaker 1:But to I would just be I would be curious to have to see the evaluation or to ask Aqua what the evaluation is that they're basing this on and just see what and have an opportunity to speak to the department and find out what actually is going on and what actually could be done.
Speaker 2:Well, that's what I was saying is that you're referencing the the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection spillway, then did they send you a certified letter saying Right. You're violation. Someone elaborate a little bit more than we get it you want to be involved and we get it you want to draw it down or bring it down. But like to me, you know, when I worked for Frank Plopley, was telling you I have Astairea. You know, there was in Lower Gwinnett, there was a across from the old township building.
Speaker 2:This is when I was in high school, was interning for him. He said Goodman Properties was looking to build a new giant or gernerty's at the time, and this whole project involved in it was all these trailer park homes, like Neshamity Falls type And of he was see, like, Rob, see this plan here? I wanna teach you something. He only wants this. But all this is that they can get to cut all this out and think that they won at the township level.
Speaker 2:That they're, oh, yeah. Were outraged about that, but we'll give you the we'll give you the Gennardese building. That's all they really want. I was like, Oh, that's interesting that you have to He's like, Yeah, sometimes I gotta put a traffic signal down on the other side of town in order to get my plan approved. And I said, Oh, that's interesting.
Speaker 2:And that's kind of what it feels like for Aqua, is that ultimately they maybe wanted to just give it to West Goshen Township.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I think I would and again, I wouldn't I do work for Aqua, and I love those guys. My guess is maybe the new entity just doesn't wanna deal with it. And I don't blame them. I had had some friends, one of them passed away a couple years ago, but he worked at Aqua and he was like, we just, you know, we don't use the dam for anything. It's just there for us.
Speaker 1:We really don't, you know, and at that time he was like, and this is just him at a very low level not knowing anything and being like, we'd probably give it kind of damn Denny. We don't really want it. We don't use it. I'm sure they don't want the liability of it. They don't want it on their balance sheet.
Speaker 1:But I've got to think that there's many ways that you can address whatever DEP violation there may be. Maybe in the sense of maybe the static water service gets lowered by 10 feet, and then you build in inherently 10 more feet of storage. And that spillway is not getting engaged as often as it is. And you know, you just have a little smaller water surface area, maybe a little bit more embankment area around the side and some room where you can plant some other vegetation and you can kind of get, you know, I don't want call it a beach, but an area where you can fish from and do things. Like, that's what I want to see happen.
Speaker 1:Mean, obviously, I have an office building that's right on the reservoir, I'd love But to see it stay I think I would be shocked if there weren't many things that could be done easily to remove any violation by way of getting just more storage in the by lowering the pool elevation of it. And there's a lot that's up at the end of rights here where we're at that's vacant right now. It's not really buildable. I've done million sketches on it for people. I mean, it'd be a great little
Speaker 2:Is it the dirt pike trail? Exactly. I can hear them from my house. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I don't wanna But what a great little spot. You could build a parking lot and just have an area for the park, for the reservoir. That's what I think would be cool.
Speaker 2:You could connect West Ocean Parks Trail
Speaker 1:you could I
Speaker 2:know and have a full walking trail all the way around it I think there's a lot of things that they could do to save it and actually make it up to be enjoyed by the community. By the community. I think getting it in the hands of the township would be the or I guess you said the county also.
Speaker 1:Or the county. Mean, they have the Parks Department. Look, West Ocean, mean, it's obviously it's physically in West Ocean Township. West Ocean and East Ocean right next door, they both have very robust public works departments. I would just be interested to see what the fiscal side of it would be like and understand if you lower the pole elevation, if it takes all of that stuff out of the equation, and it can be there.
Speaker 1:Mean, you don't really hear anything about Marsh Creek Dam being rebuilt or redone. I grew up near the Coatesville Reservoir. I've never had anything about it being redone. I guess it's an earthen dam with a gabion basket stabilized lower slope. Yeah, but I've never seen seeps or leaks or or seen anyone out there working on seeps or leaks of it.
Speaker 2:So how much work have you done or have other engineers done in Chester County as part of the developing land where they say, All right, we have to make sure the what do they call it? The water I hear you mention it all the time, not the easement, but the Like
Speaker 1:the floodplain?
Speaker 2:Well, water collection off your yard. If you're building a new house
Speaker 1:Oh, the stormwater management.
Speaker 2:Stormwater management, that's the word I was looking for. The stormwater management, how many houses were built all the way up, I guess, north and west of Chester County that use this watershed and use this? Does that throw off their ability to really make any changes? They say, hey, listen, this is designed to catch this water. If we alter this.
Speaker 1:All of those properties should have been designed back in the day to handle their own stormwater, but that's what I was saying. Like, the reservoir is so huge. And unlike a detention basin that's sloped to the bottom, if you just lower the water surface elevation, every foot you lower it, you're getting that foot across the whole acreage of the reservoir, which will be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of cubic feet of storage. So you could lower the static water surface by three or four or five feet and buy yourself a huge amount of flood control.
Speaker 2:But there's no active pumps in those old towers or anything like that. So if Aqua says they want to do the drawdown this summer, somebody's got to show up with some sort of pumping mechanism and a hose and they're going to throw it in the spillway.
Speaker 1:Well, that or there's not a riser inside that facility, then they can open up that sluice gate and open it up and let some of the base flow. Because the reservoir has a base flow that comes out of it as well.
Speaker 2:Right. So it's something underneath that we can't really see. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Got it. Okay. Yep. It's almost like a gate that you can that you can operate that lifts up and that's how so at the county and I will say our County Water Resource Authority our staff is they are honestly fantastic I mean, I don't know what we would really do without that knowledge base there Yeah, But for instance, in a predicted storm event, say, a hurricane coming up through here, they may go out and Lower Hibernia Reservoir a little bit in anticipation of it coming so that we then build in some extra storage so that we don't engage the spillway or we don't engage more flow coming down and then kind of protect everything downstream, which is primarily Coatesville and the whole area down there. You can control that.
Speaker 1:I will say that there's a lot of cost and maintenance in maintaining that sluice gate and maintaining the valves that we can open and close to make sure that they do work. But we do actively use Hibernia for flood control, and we lower that pole elevation if we need to. As you can imagine and everyone talks about drought all the time now that's like every day. It seems I can't feel like we're in it, but whatever. But if we need to do releases, we can do the same thing.
Speaker 1:We can release water into it as well because P American has intakes that are downstream of there. So if things are getting dried up, can kind of start to shed some water out of the reservoir to get more water downstream.
Speaker 2:So when you say we, does that We the county. The county. So the county has existing staff that technically can manage, that know how to manage. So West Coast and Township might not have a staff that says something that says, Oh, we know what to do here.
Speaker 1:We know how
Speaker 2:to lower these. So you say to yourself, Okay, well then that comes to number two. Would have to be a county township join after because you need people to do the drawdown and someone to say, Hey, I think you need one.
Speaker 1:We need to go out there and let some water out. So that's I'm sure my staff there who's all, like I said, awesome will probably hate me. But yes, that's what they do. So they do it very well. I will say it's five minutes away from their office as opposed to driving thirty five, forty minutes out to yeah, out to Schruber or the Hibernia to do that.
Speaker 1:But they do do it very effectively. And it's county board we meet once a month. And I will say it's a two hour meeting of just pure business going through all that we have going on. It's not like it's a waste of time meeting where we're just like, yeah, this and that and all those in favor. I mean, we're going through task orders and things that are being done to the facilities.
Speaker 1:Rarely do we even have the time to just go through some proactive stuff or some things We're that we're looking to do look usually working on remedying problems or updates on releases or storms or, you know, water flow and things like that. So it would be another thing for us to do, but there is there is an authority that Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, mean,
Speaker 1:if you're
Speaker 2:listening to this at home You may
Speaker 1:hear this or gonna
Speaker 2:kill Yeah. If take the time to listen to this at home, you know, what you hear about is like, you know, these it's a volunteer job you're having, right? Yeah. Like you're volunteering your time to make sure everything goes right and all happens behind the scenes so that when you're coming to work and you're driving up airport or you're driving up one these roads, it's not flooded out or like so, you know, I think it's important to stress to people that, you know, you take the time to do that because I'm pretty sure Denny works one hundred and twenty hours a week. It's up there.
Speaker 2:I can tell
Speaker 1:you that. That's for sure.
Speaker 2:You know, I'm just you know between the dinners and the events and the luncheons and the you know, I can definitely tell you are all over the place all the time. And, you know, I think it's important for people to know that work does get done Yeah. Oh, yeah. Behind the scenes here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That, know, is also not just for pay, but for
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:The betterment of the whole Chester County and the areas you service. So, you know, from no one's ever told you thank you. No. But
Speaker 1:still like I said, the reservoir, when I saw that Aqua letter, I actually was kind of encouraged thinking that maybe, maybe fingers maybe, crossed it will it'll it'll at least start the conversation like we're doing right now. Yeah. And I've had with some other of course, was just, you know, in a in a cocktail hour kind of a setting. So everybody's kind of just having a good time, I'm and I'm just saying to some of our elected officials how cool it would be. But it would
Speaker 2:be cool. Without a doubt.
Speaker 1:It really would be.
Speaker 2:People are told they used to love fishing there. I'm not sure I don't even know if it's with the whole water sports, but at least canoeing or
Speaker 1:Yeah, canoeing or kayaker closet and yeah, mean there's there literally is I sit there in the office and I can watch it That's one of the reasons you know, we're moving this bill We're moving our building and I'm not gonna sell this building because I just who knows what the future holds maybe I could have 10 people again one day or be back in here but you know how can you how else can you have an office on waterfront property in Westchester?
Speaker 2:Well your view is much better than that.
Speaker 1:You can't.
Speaker 2:Much better. It might be the best view. Saw in your very crowded parking lot. I was shocked how many cars are in this.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's pretty bad. Parking's a sore subject here.
Speaker 2:Can tell People working from home, this parking lot defies the odds of that. But your view coming into your park
Speaker 1:That's cool, right?
Speaker 2:Oh, it's don't even think Do you have a fence? Is there even a fence?
Speaker 1:There's a fence.
Speaker 2:Okay. We led the cause to get that fence replaced years ago. Lex Falcon, one of our neighbors, made a lot of calls to Aqua
Speaker 1:and Okay
Speaker 2:made that happen.
Speaker 1:It used to be yeah in terrible shape and you could go through it under it and guys would fish back there. There was a time when one of my one of our guys said that he could easily drive a golf ball across the reservoir so we had a concrete pad out back. We were hitting some golf balls, but it's not even close. You're not even getting, like, a quarter of the way across
Speaker 2:It's that very misleading how big it is. Exactly. Yeah. That's and that was kind of like what my next thing was that, you know, a letter like this goes out, you know, I think from Aqua's standpoint, it's a pretty fair letter, but to me, it reads like, you know, in a perfect world, if you guys just dig this up for our hands, that'd be great. You know, like whether it be the residents of West Ocean Township, the administrators were doing joint effort with the county.
Speaker 2:But how many lawsuits do you think this will create just to try to slow it down? People down, I would say downstream or I down the mean, goes out. How many attorneys do you think are working on this right now just to be like, Okay, let's see if we can stop this
Speaker 1:mean, about it. Have a ramp If you live downstream, would you want it? I mean, it'll be a dramatic difference when it rains downstream than what it is today. I would imagine that there's a number of them. And I would think that, you know, while immediately downstream right now is not completely developed, I mean, it's going to be and it is getting that way.
Speaker 1:I mean, there's no question about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Well, just remember living here, you know, the amount of people who fought the Y being built was astronomical.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2:And, you know, some of our neighbors were upset about it at the time. Said, I'm like, we bought a residential home in a pretty commercial area.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, there's a church here. There's businesses here. There's a school there right like I don't know if we can keep I like having the Y at the end of our street
Speaker 1:right
Speaker 2:but that's kind of where I See that you know, it's somebody's gonna sue about something. And then you look at the time frame and the years, it starts getting into like, oh, we expect it by 2028, 2029. Right. And then you're going, okay, what's really gonna end up happening before anything really gets moving and we just see what we see here for the last twenty my twenty plus years
Speaker 1:is
Speaker 2:just what we have today. So that's kind of what I would imagine is gonna tie this up and then eventually have Aqua say, you know, we really don't want to deal with this. Here's the property, the deed and here's the picture. And here's a little bit of money to get you started on
Speaker 1:converting But it to a we have a Parks Department, right? We have again, I'm not advocating for the county because there's always, you know, we're always working on the budget, there is a Parks Department, there is a Wood Resource Authority that oversees our dams. We do know how to do it. I would just say that, like I said before, I would love to just have the real, medical report on the dam and exactly what's going on and then you could really make that informed decision. If it really needs to be replaced or breached, then that's a whole other thing.
Speaker 1:But having gone through numerous other projects with our dams, we've never ever had even a scenario where anything needed to be breached. These are all just basically, I would characterize them as just normal maintenance to an earthen dam. I mean, they do get seeps, you do have piezometers, you do monitor them. That's what good practice is. The county does a fantastic job.
Speaker 1:They really do. Our authority just stays on top of every single thing. Gannett Fleming, the engineering firm that does it, is exactly like a hand in hand like lock and step they do that they do dams and it's a it's a good synergy there. It's not free Yeah, but but again, you could not have the Hibernia Dam right now. Provides so much flood control for the Coatesville area.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's enormous. I mean, to breach it today, you'd be denuding millions and millions of dollars of real estate that's downstream that would now be in the I mean, flat site, Coatesville's most coveted site to revitalize the city would be underwater is underwater if the dam were to be breached. Oh, wow. So it can't go away. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then again, like I said, supply is there. So you don't have the water supply component. That's why they're getting rid of it. But boy, you could have the recreation component. It would be really cool.
Speaker 2:Think it would be a can't miss. But again, it's I think more or less, you know, my goal here was to dispel some of the rumors. Yeah. You know, that you hear that it's failing or that they're gonna fill it in, they're gonna sell it, it's gonna be developed. Just It
Speaker 1:would never be filled in. It would be drained down and there would be what's left of the stream channel down in through the middle and then that's that. And like I said, there is my cousin, her husband works at the Department of Harrisburg, and he gives a fantastic talk on legacy sediments and the removal of dams. I mean, he's done this for me a couple of times here. Did one for me at West Ocean, but Pennsylvania was apparently, like, the largest concentration of mill dams anywhere in the world.
Speaker 1:And at one point in time, all of these streams were just a dam to back of the pool area, to the next mill dam, and the next mill dam, and we used it for energy and for everything else. And it created all kinds of sediment problems, that's why you see when it floods up in Lancaster, you see these straight down eroded stream channels. That's all just sediment that's been legacy placed in there over hundreds of years and now is being eroded away. So there is a contingent that would like to see that stream channel removed and fish to be able to continue upstream and to be able to do that. But that's tens of millions of dollars to just do that.
Speaker 1:So it would never get filled in. They could draw it down, remove the dam. That's not free either to do that, right? So that's why I think that this was the first step of trying to hopefully just get the conversation started. This is
Speaker 2:the trailer park development. I mean, that's how I kind of view it to my ears. I just don't see with the math how expensive anything is to get built today.
Speaker 1:Or even get unbuilt. Or get unbuilt
Speaker 2:in this case. Yeah, I think that it's certainly if you don't know it, it's a beautiful spot and if I love to see
Speaker 1:that fence come down people be able to be canoe across there a little dock some parking lot just or just like you said a walking trail that goes from the park down to here and then back up to the parking lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I have all these ideas in my head, but we've watched some municipalities. West Bradford is one. West Bradford bought the old Emeryville, the old State Mental Hospital that's out. And they bought it and it's gonna become a park for West Bradford and the way that they did it was I think that they think they put a mortgage on it and then they assessed the special tax. Nobody wants to be extra taxed, but it's not like it's this is not like it's hundreds of dollars.
Speaker 1:So like I would be interested to know if the county, you know, if you paid an extra $15 a year to have another park, would it be worth it? Like, I would do it. Or would the businesses do it? Or who knows what? But it would be nice to just know what the real problem is and what the real cause is before we see once it's breached it's never getting built again yeah for sure
Speaker 2:have you ever seen the bald eagles back here
Speaker 1:oh yeah
Speaker 2:yep at least three that I know of that live right here on this reservoir and I'm guessing eat out of that of that lake and you know that was always the big lawsuit with not the lawsuit but the complaint with the Y was that oh there are eagles nests yeah eagles nests living I'm like I think the eagles nests
Speaker 1:on the other side. See them out there all the time. And in wintertime, as the reservoir freezes, you know, that little area of you can basically when a water body freezes, the last part to freeze is the deepest part. So you can kind of get a little lay of where the middle of the reservoir is by where the last bits of water are at.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And when all the ducks are kind of sitting around there, that eagle kind of dive bombs and just tries to like get food through the wintertime. But yeah, every now and then I'll send an email to the company, bald eagles in the
Speaker 2:They're out there.
Speaker 1:Out back. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah. No, you don't see them all the time, but they're there. So, I mean, it's definitely a really beautiful part of West Ocean Township, Chester County, for sure. Yeah. You know, it's just a matter of, I don't think a lot of people know about it.
Speaker 1:No. No. But like I said, right next to the park, I mean, all the all the things are there for it to be really cool. Yeah. Other than the money.
Speaker 1:But we could we could figure that out, actually. We could or at least try to get our arms around what that really is.
Speaker 2:Well, mean, Aqua, it's like it's their it's their son. They're gonna they're sending him out on his own, give him a little stipend and say, hey. Get get things started over And, you know, hopefully everything works out. But again, I do think that, you know, going and shouting at a township board meeting when a lot of people don't know what really is going on, know, and again, the whole thing was really caused by the sale, of the company. And I get it.
Speaker 2:You're going to reach out, and they can't really talk about it yet. These are probably publicly traded entities. They can't divulge what they're working on. But I think you hope that people aren't driving around or telling people that the dam is currently failing when there's really no evidence that points to that right
Speaker 1:now. Least none that I see with a relatively trained eye.
Speaker 2:The weeds are getting bad. Yeah. I would like Aqua, you're listening, spray for the weeds or go pull those big weeds out. Because this is the first year I've really seen weeds on that hill the way they are
Speaker 1:right now.
Speaker 2:Usually they come out or there's a couple that get pulled, but I'd love to
Speaker 1:see the weeds removed. Well, I mean, our elected officials are elected. People can speak what they would like to happen. I think if enough people spoke that they think it would be a good thing, then maybe it would get them. Mean, understand that they have budgeting constraints and things like that.
Speaker 1:But like I said, we live in probably one of the wealthiest counties in the country. Yeah. And Westchester is a little microchasm inside that area. So it would be it would be a cool amenity. I think you can believe it could be.
Speaker 2:I totally 100% agree.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, look, I appreciate you coming on.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:We can do it again and we can talk about some housing stuff, but I'm kind of working on some things that get a lot of people in here we talk about. Everyone beats the drum of the housing thing but I would like to see I think that there are some things that can be done to improve it, to improve the process and but I'm not ready to kind of go out with them yet so we'll do that on our next one together so
Speaker 2:thanks Bob. No. Thank you.
Speaker 1:I appreciate it very much.
Speaker 2:Thank you for
Speaker 1:having me.
Speaker 2:Alright. Yep.