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About 170 residents, many of them from the Glenhardie Condominium Association, attended the May 21 information session hosted by the state Department of Environmental Protection at the Radisson Hotel Valley Forge to voice their concern about increased flooding from the proposed development.
"We are here tonight as owners and developers and also as your neighbor," said Dennis Maloomian, president of Realen Properties. "We understand you are worried. It's our strong intent to be responsible neighbors."
"We are going to be on the receiving end of that golf course. Can you state with certainty that Glenhardie will not receive one iota of your stormwater?" asked Bernie Taylor, president of the Glenhardie Condominium Association.
"I can say it won't add any water from the golf course," said Frank Brown, a consultant hired as part of the team of geologists, hydrologists and engineers that investigated the site for Maloomian.
About half of the 123-acre Valley Forge Golf Club site is underlain by karst or carbonate geology. Sinkholes have formed in it and a large quantity of stormwater generated by the site and stormwater coming from off-site areas such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike tollbooth area and Lockheed Martin is disappearing into the sinkholes.
The development planned for the site is between 2,000 and 3,000 residential units, one million square feet of commercial space and a hotel. With such a large-scale development much of the land will be impervious surface adding to the volume of stormwater that will be generated. The geologists said that the bedrock is riddled with faults, cracks and fissures that have formed over thousands of years. Some fissures are eight feet high or more.
The fissures "give the limestone the ability to accept and convey large quantities of water," said Jim Lolcama, an expert in karst geology hired by Maloomian. Lolcama said that they found 14 locations on the property where underground fissures carried water away at a fast rate without raising the water table or showing up in a spring.
The developer plans to install 23 gravity drains in the bedrock in the area of these fissures. Lolcama said that a Web search revealed half a dozen locations where these drains or stormwater disposal wells were being used including West Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Ky., and the Federal Highway Administration in Knoxville, Tenn.
After the meeting, James Newbold, a DEP manager who was part of a six-person DEP contingent at the meeting, admitted in an interview that they didn't have any experience with gravity drains. "It's rather unique but not unheard of," Newbold said.
"They are considered class V injection wells," said Dominic Rocco, DEP permit chief and technical staff. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is in charge of overseeing injection wells but typically only requires that the wells be registered, Rocco said, adding that he believed that Realen had already started the registration process.
Maloomian said that stormwater from roof drains in the commercial section of the property will be directed to gravity drains.
In other areas, runoff from the streets and from adjacent properties will be processed through a cleansing unit to make sure that polluted water is not released into the gravity drains. The streets in the complex will also be swept every two weeks. The developer will build a post-construction monitoring system to make sure that water released to the drains is clean.
Newbold said that the DEP is requiring an extra step, a clean-streams water-quality permit for discharging water to the gravity drains.
While many of the residents said that the presentation was impressive, it still left unanswered questions and no guarantees.
Warren Kampf, a member of the Tredyffrin Board of Supervisors, said that he was not speaking officially as a board member but as a citizen.
"Maloomian has a clean slate to build a small city. You have a duty to make sure before one shovel of dirt is (turned over) that you guarantee the citizens of Tredyffrin will suffer no harm. I think we would all agree that it is new and cutting-edge and my question is for DEP. What happens if it doesn't work or doesn't work efficiently? What assurance is there from the DEP that something can be done?"
Glenhardie suffers from severe flooding even in small rainstorms. It is downstream of a number of developments that were built before adequate stormwater facilities were required. The condominium association and Glenhardie Golf Club have had to make costly repairs to bridges that get carried away by the floodwaters. If stormwater from the Village at Valley Forge development is not managed properly, it will create huge new problems for Glenhardie.
Maloomian said that one of the reasons Glenhardie floods is because of an arched culvert associated with the Pennsylvania Turnpike that was undersized when it was built, although there are no plans to do anything about it.
The developer said that their proposed stormwater-management plan will keep on site a greater volume of water than the current law requires, which is the volume of water created by a two-year storm.
John McGee, a Glenhardie resident and a former developer himself, said that it was common for developers to come and go. "My question is: Will you be here 10 years from now? And if you are not here, who will be responsible?"
"We will be investing hundreds of millions of dollars and yes, I will still be around in 10 years," Maloomian said.
The plan will be built over a number of years. During the first phase, half of the commercial space and a small portion of residential units will be built. It should take two years to complete. The balance of the commercial space and residential units will be built in the second phase, which is expected to take five to seven years.
Interested parties have until June 14 to submit written comments to the DEP's Norristown office regarding Realen's plan.
