SANATOGA PA – Buy low, sell high. It’s good advice for almost anyone seeking to make a profit, including the developer of property on East High Street near the Sanatoga interchange of U.S. Route 422, where a mound of earthen fill apparently still has room to grow.
About another 11 feet of room, according to Lower Pottsgrove (PA) Township Manager Rodney Hawthorne.
Earthmoving work earlier this week in Sanatoga.
Developer Charles Tornetta, who owns vacant land near East High Street and Rupert Road, just west of the Turkey Hill convenience store, is piling fill there that ultimately is expected to be leveled across the property. Tornetta can buy the fill inexpensively now, when few other projects need it, so stockpiling it “makes sense,” Hawthorne said Thursday night (Dec. 17, 2009) in a interview following the township Board of Commissioners‘ meeting.
The fill pile, which was started in March and reached a height of 23-1/2 feet Thursday, can actually grow to as high as 35 feet under permits Tornetta holds from the township and the state Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), Hawthorne said. More fill likely will be added, the manager acknowledged.
Cleanliness of the fill is being monitored by four different parties, Hawthorne added: the township’s engineering firm, Bursich Associates; the DEP, and two testing laboratories employed by Tornetta. The developer, in a recent conversation with Hawthorne that was requested earlier this month by commissioners, has offered to send the township copies of his labs’ test results.
Those results should arrive within two weeks, Hawthorne said.
Area residents, particularly those in the Woodgate community north of East High Street and west of Rupert Road, have voiced concerns about the potential for contamination of their drinking water wells from unknown elements contained in the fill. The most recent tests by Bursich showed the fill to be clean, engineer Chad Camburn told commissioners.
Related:
- Still Piling It Up At The Interchange
- Sanatoga Soil Mound Concerns Its Neighbors
- Grading Gets Started Near Interchange
- Fill Piles At Sanatoga Exit
Sign up to get The Sanatoga Post delivered free daily by e-mail.
See our galleries for photos that appear in The Post. Got news for us? E-mail The Post.
What aassurance does the township have that this pile isn’t there ten years from now?
None!
Nothing like welcoming folks to LP with a pile of dirt to show how developer freindly our township offices people are……
This is another dumb move. Kinda in line with the dumb plan to put a dog leg at the top of Rupert road.
Wake up people, like the abandoned home that lay in the lot for two decades this pile of dirt may be the bane of the township for years to come….
Wonder if I can pile dirt 30 feet high on my property in the event of a flood?
This project is an insult to us who live here.
I do not see the proper compaction going on at this site.
So, nothing can be develop or placed on the site for several years.
Limerick and Lower Pottsgrove have talked about a plan for years. Nothing but traffic and exhaust fumes.
Horrible venture by both governing bodies. Costco will most likely be a bust.