Heavy rain recently highlighted the flooding issue at the corner of Bridge and White Streets in Weissport.

Weissport Borough Council is looking into how to get a blocked drain fixed that is causing flooding at the intersection in front of Chantilly’s.

The drain is across White Street from Chantilly’s and appears to be blocked or broken. Water should go into that drain, through a pipe under the railroad tracks, and empty into the canal. The water is not getting through the pipe and causes flooding at the intersection.

“We had PennDOT take a look at it,” Council President Tom Ketchledge said. “Then we reached out to (state Rep.) Doyle Heffley’s office, and we were told that PennDOT looked at it and said it’s not blocked, that the water is coming from the canal.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Councilman Joe Foster said. “If it’s not clogged; even if it came from the canal, the water should still go through.”

Ketchledge suggested that, in the meantime, the borough purchase a pump through CoStars.

“It’s not a permanent fix,” Ketchledge said. “It’s just a fix to alleviate the water problem until we can figure a permanent solution.”

Council did not take an action on the purchase of the pump, and will continue to seek a solution to the blocked pipe.

Bodycams

Councilman James Osborne recommended that the borough buy a body camera to be used by Chief Matt Williams while on duty. Williams, who also works for the Shenandoah Police Department, was recently involved in an incident in which he was hurt.

“The reason things panned out for me was that Mahanoy City had the body cameras,” Williams said. “We just ordered four of them for Shenandoah.”

The Halo-brand bodycam comes with a docking station, charger, computer software, technical support, training, night vision, and stealth mode. The cost is $918 which includes the first year of cloud storage. Each year after is $325 for the cloud.

“Video taken by the bodycam is uploaded to the cloud to the third-party vendor,” Osborne said. “Matt (Williams) would be able to see the video using software on his computer; but, would not be able to edit it, for security purposes.”

Council passed a motion to buy the bodycam from Wolfcom for no more than $1,000.