Palmerton spends another $20K on field

A project referred to by several officials as an “afterthought” continues to haunt Palmerton Area School District.

At August’s board meeting, Palmerton directors unanimously approved spending $20,859 to bring its new softball field into compliance with the permit it received for the project.

The work includes removing gravel around the softball field dugouts and backstop, re-grading the swale and placing topsoil and permanent seeding at the site, located just east of the junior high school along Fireline Road.

While Muschlitz Excavating is scheduled to begin the two-week project in the third week of September, Palmerton school board member Earl Paules held out hope that the district could avoid spending the money for what he is concerned will still be a problem down the road.

“Softball starts in March and we’re going to have a problem every year with frost coming out of the ground and leaving that a muddy mess behind the dugouts,” Paules said. “Taking out the stone and putting grass there isn’t going to help. I think we need to have our engineer redesign the drainage system. We know we have a problem, so let’s fix it instead of doing it wrong again.”

Representatives from Barry Isett and Associates, the engineering firm that worked on the softball field plans, said grass seed was planted behind the dugouts in the fall of 2018, but during the spring of 2019, which would have been the second growing season, Paules and a group of volunteers altered the site, putting in a level gravel area to help with drainage concerns. The softball team then began using the facility during the second half of its 2019 season.

“Ideally, after two growing seasons, we would have looked at what grass did or did not take and had the contractor come back while we still had them on the hook to see what needs to be done to stabilize the area,” said Tim Sisock, project manager for Isett. “Contracts are open, and that part of the project is not closed out until there is 70 percent germination at the site. We never got a chance to get there.”

Asked by Paules how the initial design came to be, Sisock described the origin of the softball field idea, calling it an “afterthought.”

According to Sisock and district officials, the field was an addendum to a much larger project that included installing a turf field at the high school athletic stadium and putting an addition on the junior high school.

“The district had that land sitting there and the softball field became a way to use the dirt from those projects and not having to pay to haul it off site,” Sisock said. “It was an opportunity to do a project at a cost that was minimal compared to doing it on its own later down the road.”

Several directors, however, said they could not remember an official discussion among the board about using that land for a softball field.

Paules questioned whether the district could leave the site like it is now while the drainage system is redesigned. The district faces fines however if it does not restore the field to the permitted design.

“Right now you’re out of compliance with your permit and I don’t think a redesign and approval of a new set of plans is going to happen fast enough to satisfy the township and conservation district,” Robert Korp, of Barry Isett and Associates, said. “What we can do after the field is restored is give the district options to alleviate the mud concerns. That could be anywhere from matting, which is cheaper, to a more expensive drainage system.”

In the meantime, Paules said he couldn’t support any work that will knowingly create a problem.

“I went to Palmerton Area High School and they didn’t teach me to do something wrong twice,” he said.