Chestnuthill, developer clash over stormwater pipe

Chestnuthill Township supervisors and the Mount Effort Plaza Development Group LLC were locked in a stalemate Tuesday night over future maintenance of a stormwater pipe below Route 115.

The developer wants to redevelop Mount Effort Plaza at the corner of Route 115 and State Road near Effort, and needs to connect its stormwater pipe to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s pipe running down the middle of Route 115. They need a highway occupancy permit from PennDOT for the utility work.

In order to get that permit, they need the township to apply for it or they can apply for it on behalf of the township. The crux of the issue is who will be responsible for the pipe extension once the development is completed.

PennDOT’s policy is that the municipality takes over that responsibility, but Carl Gould II, chairman of the Chestnuthill Township supervisors, said no to that idea.

“We can’t find anywhere that PennDOT can mandate (us to do it),” he said. “It’s a no-win situation for the township. We have 156 miles of roadway in the township. We don’t have the budget to maintain what we have now.”

Joseph Hanyon, an attorney for MHK Attorneys and representative for the developer, said the economic benefit of redeveloping the property is overwhelmingly greater compared to the possible cost to the township of repairing the pipe extension.

“Whatever we put in there is going to be state-of-the-art. It won’t have to be tended to for 100 years,” he said.

“The maintenance goes on forever, and there lies the problem,” Gould said. “We’ll be all long dead, but the expense will be the taxpayers.”

In anticipation of an impasse, Hanyon asked state Rep. Jack Rader to attend the supervisors meeting in order to help reach a solution. The project began in 2014.

“Bond them in perpetuity,” Rader said about the developer. “You get out of the expense, and you get what you need.”

His suggestion would require that the developer be held responsible for the cost of repairs or replacement of the pipe in perpetuity. Hanyon threw out the suggestion of 50 or 75 years, but Gould held fast to his position.

Instead, Gould suggested to Hanyon that developers team up with municipalities and get the state to make PennDOT cover their own roads.

“This is going to be a tsunami in the state,” Gould said, because municipalities are getting tired of being pushed into this situation. “The tax we get (from the businesses) never equals what it costs to maintain the road. This is inherently unfair.”

Rader said PennDOT wants someone dependable, someone like a municipality that is going to be there forever, someone that they can go back to in order to get problems fixed.

“That’s why you won’t get the state to change it,” he said.

Chestnuthill Township solicitor Timothy McManus said PennDOT’s policy of having the municipality cover the expense came from the days when PennDOT took over township roads and made them state roads. The stormwater systems were already in place by the municipality. That shouldn’t apply to roads that are already state roads.

“PennDOT keeps using that as their excuse,” he said.

Ideas such as an agility clause and a replenishment clause were suggested, but then McManus had an idea. He suggested that the developer go to PennDOT and offer to pay them to install the pipe extension. It would remove the township from having to apply for the highway occupancy permit to do the utility work, and the extension would be part of the state’s stormwater line.

Hanyon said he was agreeable to that solution, and Gould supported the idea as well.

In addition to the pipe, the developer also had two more requests for the township: They need an extension of about 10 feet from the sidewalk to the corner of State Road and Route 115 for an Americans with Disabilities Act ramp, but this could also be handled through a similar work agreement, Hanyon said.

The other is an overlay to improve the connection between Route 115 and Chipperfield Drive. Gould said the township could approve a feathering of roads to improve the connection, but Hanyon said he wanted the supervisors to hold off on voting on that until after the other issues were resolved.