Candidates kick off campaigns

Development swamps resident's property

By David Bernard , Staff Writer

08/05/2003

EAST CALN -- Mary Sokso has seen her East Caln neighborhood change in more than one way since she bought her house in 1997.

Not all of the changes have been pleasant, though.

Sokso, her husband and a neighbor have been seeking the township’s assistance in recent months to resolve a drainage problem that began as an eyesore and has become what they see as a hazard.

"It’s a dangerous situation," Sokso said in a recent interview.

For their part, township officials say they have not forgotten Sokso’s requests, and that they intend to do what they can to help.

"The situation will be addressed," said Township Manager Ed Hill. "I don’t know if it will be to her satisfaction, but it will be addressed."

Sokso’s Wetherburn Drive home stands at the end of a cul-de-sac near the former Downingtown Farmers’ Market.

In the late 1990s, the Ashbridge Square shopping center was planned on a tract of land about 50 yards and up a hill from the property.

Sokso and her husband attended township meetings at which the shopping center plans were discussed, meetings at which developers assured them that the line of trees behind the homes would not be cut down.

The day Sokso came home from work to discover the trees behind her home gone was the first unwelcome surprise.

The next was to find that they’d been removed to facilitate drainage for the shopping center, which was completed in 2000.

A drainage pipe was placed at the bottom of the hill to deal with stormwater runoff from the shopping center and its asphalt parking lots.

In the original plan, water would run off into a gully, draining past the house and under Business Route 30. However, Sokso said, it doesn’t work that way anymore.

Now the gully is filling with silt eroded from the hillside. The water that collects there stagnates, swamping her back yard when the ground can’t absorb it quickly enough.

"What the water has done, it’s found its own way to run," Sokso said.

On a good day, the property is damp. After heavy rains, it becomes pond-like. The weeds are high as the turf can’t be mowed. Ducks have visited on more than one occasion, and worse, mosquitoes found it ideal for laying eggs this summer. (Sokso has notified the Chester County Health Department’s mosquito control division and is waiting for its response.) And about 300 new housing units are being planned for Bell Tavern Road, which Sokso fears may aggravate the situation.

"In the best of times, (the drainage) would have worked out," she said, "but now it doesn’t. It has to be dredged. Who’s going to do that? I’m not going to do that."

She said she’s had repeated contact with the township and her development’s homeowners’ association, but to no avail. "Nobody has really given us any satisfaction."

Contacted at his office, township Manager Ed Hill acknowledged that he may have misunderstood the situation when he first spoke with Sokso.

"I’ve been fairly busy with what’s going on in the past couple of months in East Caln," he said, including the planned Bell Tavern houses, the township’s 275th anniversary celebration and his upcoming retirement after 30 years as manager.

He said he looked at Sokso’s back yard before his July vacation, and now that he’s returned, he plans to pursue the issue further and discuss it with the Ashbridge Square developers to determine if anything can be done.

"So she hasn’t been forgotten," Hill said. "She’s on the list of ‘to do’s.’ ..I know now what she means. She’ll get an answer in the next two weeks at the latest."