SHAMOKIN - Engineers walked along the Shamokin Creek channel in the city Monday to further gauge the scope of an historic restoration project.
Using Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates previously collected by officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), four engineers began the task of conducting a more detailed review of 60 damaged sites in the creek channel.
Mike Brinkash, city engineer, said the structural assessment of the creek channel is expected to continue through Wednesday. The engineers will meet Friday to review data, and begin to survey the area Monday, he said.
"The end product of this is going to be actual design plans," Brinkash said.
Those plans will be used in the bidding process for the channel's restoration, for which the city was awarded $1,787,197 in federal grant money. That money will become available to the city on Oct. 1 and will be released as project invoices are approved by federal officials.
According to some archival data on Shamokin's history, the creek channel was graded and its stone walls built in the 1930s as a project of the Works Progress Administration.
It's one of the few stone channels of its kind still in existence in Pennsylvania, said Steve Bartos, city clerk, one of the reasons the federal funding was made available for the project.
"They do not know of another wall of this length, width or breadth of a historical nature," Bartos said.
The portion of the creek between Washington and Market streets that runs directly behind the city's downtown lays within an area that some
day could be recognized as a national historic district, said Tom Grbenick, director of SEDA-COG.
That portion of channel will be restored as close to its original state as possible, Bartos said, adding that he hopes the exact preservation work would expand west beyond Market Street and past Claude Kehler Community Park at Third and Arch streets.
Although the portion of creek channel identified with the potential historic area is a fraction of the 1.23 miles of channel running through the city, that work figures to be the most costly.
Outlying areas in the city's Fifth Ward and downstream towards the Coal Township line would be restored using modern methods for flood control, such as the use of gabion walls - stone stacked uniformly inside mesh wiring.
The cost estimate for the entire project may rise as the design plans are solidified, but Brinkash said he's confident the restoration work could be completed without eclipsing the amount of funding already awarded.
Brinkash acknowledged it may take a balancing act with regards to the cost to restore the channel to a historic state while doing so in an age where construction codes are more detailed and restrictive.
"Even though the wall held up for 100 years, it's difficult to put in something that looks like that today that will hold up," he said.
Grbenick is seeking the public's help as he parcels together the history of the stone channel. He's asking that anyone with any photographs or information on the channel's construction contact him at 524-4491 or Bartos at city hall at 644-0876.