At the request of the Altoona Water Authority, Logan Township plans to install a full-coverage grate at the entrance of an authority-owned storm-and-sanitary sewer in Newburg, where rubble and dirt get through that are costly to remove.

Designed by authority staff engineer Mike Sinisi, the grate would replace a grill that doesn’t cover the top quarter of the pipe openings, allowing rocks carried down by Dry Run to jump over and through during heavy rain.

“Our guys will install it,” said Township Supervisors Chairman Jim Patterson. “Hopefully, it will relieve some issues.”

There has been a delay, however, due to difficulties obtaining material — including steel, which still hasn’t arrived, Patterson said.

The Water Authority board discussed the issue at a recent meeting, during which members approved a contract for up to $748,000 for the removal of rubble, dirt and other debris from sanitary-storm sewer lines and the tanks that take the “first flush” from those lines during storms.

Of 3,800 tons that need to be removed, about three-quarters are in the westerly system, and most of that has probably come down from Newburg, according to officials.

About a year ago, a contractor was just finishing up the $2 million removal of 800 tons of rubble from the line coming down from Newburg — rocks that workers carried by hand or loaded in buckets and hoisted up through manholes.

Workers had to loosen up some of the material with jackhammers.

Not long afterward, a storm in June washed in an additional 300 tons from Newburg, authority officials said last year.

While the grate that the township plans to install soon should keep out the rocks that wash down with Dry Run during storms, it won’t stop the dirt that comes down in the water.

Accordingly, the authority has been discussing the Newburg inflow issue not only with officials from the township, but also from PennDOT, the Blair County Conservation District and the Army Corps of Engineers.

“We’re willing to do our part,” said Vince Greenland, assistant district executive for design, who has been involved in the talks.

The department has been making plans for resurfacing Route 36, which runs parallel to Dry Run, and that contract could include energy dissipating structures to slow Dry Run as it crosses under the highway twice in pipes upstream from the sewer entrance, Greenland said.

That would help mitigate “scouring” downstream from those pipes, he said.

“It might help a little,” but it’s not going to solve the problem altogether, he said.

Problems have occurred along Dry Run on properties where fill has been deposited to extend yards and where the stream has been channeled through culvert pipes that are too small, Greenland said.

There is one section just off Washington Avenue, about 100 yards down from where the avenue crosses Route 36, where a culvert has blown out, gouging a ravine.

“That stream is a mess,” Greenland said.

A detention pond somewhere, perhaps installed by PennDOT, might be the ultimate answer, Patterson said.

The amount of silt and debris that washes into the storm-sanitary lines is “unbelievable,” said Mike Bianconi, the authority’s newly named director of water operations.

The authority performs routine maintenance and enters the channels once or twice a year, said Brad Kelley, director of wastewater operations, recent successor to Todd Musser, who left to start his own business.

Maybe the authority should consider creating a crew that would clean out the lines often enough that the problem doesn’t build up so much that a contractor is needed, said board member Jack Speece.

But it only takes one major storm to “nail us,” said authority General Manager Mark Perry.

The installation of the full grate will make the pipe entrance safer during high water, ensuring that no one can be swept in, Patterson said.

Mirror Staff Writer William Kibler is at 814-949-7038.

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