by Trish Rudder, Kate Evans & Kate Shunney
About four inches of rain fell in Berkeley Springs last week from Hurricane Ida, but precautions were taken to avoid possible flooding in the Town of Bath.
Councilman Rick Weber, who heads up the town’s Public Works Committee, said last Friday that the Public Works crew, led by Rodney Steiner, made sure all the culverts in town were cleaned out before the storm arrived.
Town of Bath Mayor Scott Merki said the whole public works crew stayed after hours.
“We were prepared to use sand bags, but we did not have to deploy anything,” he said.
“The town was secure; infrastructure is doing its job,” Merki said.
Weber said Steiner’s crew checks the town culverts once a week to keep them clear of debris. Morgan County DOH supervisor Rodney Crowell said the culverts were checked on the county-maintained streets such as Washington and Fairfax to keep the water runoff into the culverts and not flooding the streets.
Weber said he checked the streets on Tuesday and around noon on Wednesday. He said the Streetscapes infrastructure held and no water from the Warm Springs Run ran outside Berkeley Springs State Park.
“The county streets were also clear. Everything is good,” Weber said.
The town Streetscapes committee co-chair, Rebecca MacLeod, was pleased with the stormwater management infrastructure on the Streetscapes projects.
The latest Streetscapes project was the installation of the rain gardens on Congress Street to help manage stormwater. The new infrastructure was put to the test with heavy rainfall. The stormwater management “did great,” MacLeod said.