Crimes By The Wildlands Conservancy

photo by Tami Quigley

The top photo shows the Robin Hood Bridge, before the Wildlands Conservancy demolished the little Robin Hood Dam, just downstream beyond the bridge. The dam was only about 10 inches high, and was built as a visual effect to accompany the bridge in 1941. It was the last WPA project in Allentown, and considered the final touch for Lehigh Parkway. Several years ago, the Wildlands told the Allentown Park Director and City Council that it wanted to demolish the dam. The only thing that stood between their bulldozer and the dam was yours truly. I managed to hold up the demolition for a couple weeks, during which time I tried to educate city council about the park, but to no avail. If demolishing the dam wasn't bad enough, The Wildlands Conservancy piled the broken dam rubble around the stone bridge piers, as seen in the bottom photo. I'm sad to report that the situation is now even worse. All that rubble collected silt, and now weeds and brush is growing around the stone bridge piers. I suppose the Wildlands Conservancy considers it an extension of its riparian buffers.

The Wildlands Conservancy is now going to demolish Wehr's Dam at Covered Bridge Park in South Whitehall. The township commissioners are cooperating, by having a grossly inflated price associated with repairing the dam, to justify a disingenuous referendum. Sadly, by next spring I will be showing you before and after pictures of that crime.

top photo by Tami Quigley

above reprinted from August 2016

UPDATE: To everyone's surprise, especially the Wildlands Conservancy and the South Whitehall Commissioners, the referendum to save the dam was approved by the voters in November of 2016. The Wildlands Conservancy and the South Whitehall Commissioners are now conspiring to have the dam demolished anyway, by exaggerating its problems with the Pa. DEP...I have documented the communication between the Wildlands, State and township,  As for Lehigh Parkway, the Wildlands Conservancy should be made to remove the former dam rubble that is despoiling the vista of the Robin Hood Bridge piers.  I have been trying to interest the Morning Call about the voter suppression in regard to the Wehr's Dam referendum.  In today's paper there is an article about the danger high hazard rated dams pose to residents downstream.  I hope the paper's article today is a coincidence, and not intended to serve the Wildlands conspiracy about Wehr's Dam.  BTW,  Wehr's Dam is rated low hazard, because it poses no danger to residents.

reprinted from November of 2019 and before

Crime And Punishment For Allentown

Readers of this blog, and the facebook group Allentown Chronicles that I moderate, know that I shy away from crime reports. Quality of life in Allentown certainly hasn't improved in the last decade, despite all the new construction on Hamilton Street. 

The map shown above was produced by WFMZ to illustrate a spat of stabbings and shootings the other night in center city.  The recent May primary election featured several candidates who advocated defunding the police, in favor of more assets going to social agency intervention.

At the western end of the map is the West Park neighborhood, where I lived for over a decade. As a resident I would take more comfort in more police, not more social workers.  

While the defunders made the most noise during the primary campaign, fortunately, they didn't get the most votes. Come 2022, I hope that the new mayor understands that he has a mandate to increase the police presence.

The Dam Story

I believe that Wehr's Dam will be preserved, but it may cost much more than was needed. Here's how it came to pass.

By 2014, the Wildlands Conservancy was well entrenched in South Whitehall Township. The son of their chief financial officer was director of parks.  They had an ally as the president of the commissioners. The Wildlands helped design the new park master plan for Covered Bridge Park, and took the liberty of showing Wehr's Dam no longer there. The Wildlands approached the commissioners with a proposal to demolish the dam at no cost to the township.  Yours truly was in attendance, and outraged by the disregard of both history and beauty.  The dam has been a destination for generations, and it is the only location where you can see water go over a dam and under a covered bridge in one place.  The commissioners agreed to defer their decision to allow for public notice and input. An article on the meeting generated interest by other dam defenders, including descendants of the Wehr family.

The state had recently inspected the dam, and found it to be in good condition.  They identified a small crack on one face that needed to be addressed, and some bank erosion downstream that also needed attention. It is rated a low hazard dam because a failure would have no consequence or risk to people or private property.  It was originally overbuilt as a promo for the local fledging cement industry. It is a massive concrete wedge sitting on a massive concrete platform.

The Wildands commissioned a study which was intended to show how expensive repairing the dam would be.  Although the water at the foot of the dam is only a few inches deep, they even hired a scuba driver.  They presented the commissioners a report showing that it would cost close to a million dollars to restore the dam. Never mind that there was no necessity or reason to restore a low hazard scenic dam to as new condition.  While the commissioners were actually on board with demolishing the dam, by now there were political considerations. Thousands of people had rallied in defense of the dam, and over a hundred were now attending the meetings. The commissioners decided to commission their own study, again designed to encourage demolition. The new study put the cost of restoration at 600K, again unnecessarily rebuilding a portion of the low hazard dam. When the commissioners put the issue to voter referendum, they never expected the voters to approve the cost and possible tax increase. It was their plan that the voters would decide to do away with the dam, at no political consequence to themselves.

The Wildlands Conservancy started undermining the dam by sending their engineering reports to Harrisburg, which is anti-dam anyway. South Whitehall should have never condoned the Wildlands interfering with the legal status of township property.  But rather than reprimand the Wildlands,  the park director, now public works director of the township, awarded them the contract to oversee the Greenway Project in the park. 

It took me five years and three editors at the Morning Call to get a story about the dam. Although I provided the reporter with all the information, they chose to take all the inflated costs at face value. If it is naive on their part, or covering up for the Wildlands and establishment,  I do not know. There will be a new board of commissioners starting in 2022...Hopefully they will defend the dam with Harrisburg, and save the taxpayers some unnecessary expense preserving our history.

pictured above in 2014, I'm starting the fight to save our dam

Morning Call Whitewashes Wehr's Dam

The reporter in yesterday's Morning Call article about Wehr's Dam went out of her way not to mention me. I say this because for five years I have been urging the paper to write about the status of the dam's repair.  After a heated discussion with the current editor this past February, he finally assigned a reporter to the topic, one year after agreeing to do so in February of 2020.  Although the reporter did use some material that I supplied her with, and she did interview a former commissioner I recommended,  for an advocate in her article she used someone not involved with the issue since 2016.  I suspect that the reluctance against mentioning me came from her boss's attitude about me and other bloggers. 

Worse than my slighted ego is the whitewashing of what has transpired, and the chicanery of the Wildlands Conservancy.  The reporter quotes a Wildlands director saying... 

“We don’t go pushing it if it’s not wanted,” she said. “It’s really the township’s call."

Actually, they did go pushing, and they pushed very hard.  The Wildlands communicated with the state back channel attacking the structural integrity of the dam.  The reporter knows this, because I supplied her with copies of the letters.

The only reason the township is beginning the repair permit procedure is because one of the main Wildlands supporters, Tori Morgan, lost the primary election.  However,  the director of public works in the township, Randy Cope, continues to stall, because he is the son of a former Wildlands director and joined at the hip with them.

Had the Wildlands Conservancy not muddied the waters with the state, the dam repair would have cost 50K and been done five years ago.  It will now cost 700k and take years.

photocredit:Gregg Obst

ADDENDUM: In the last state inspection all the state wanted was one small crack filled in, and the one bank downstream fixed. The township allowed the Wildlands Conservancy to go back-channel with the state DEP, and raise numerous superfluous issues in an attempt to fiscally condemn the dam. We will now have a dam way over-repaired, costing the taxpayer 10 times more than necessary. Hopefully the new commissioners will reconsider the township's relationship with the Wildlands Conservancy.

The Vegetable Gardens Of Allentown

When Charles M. Ritter passed away in 1964, his obituary headlined that he was a star athlete at Allentown High School when graduating in 1910. He spent most of his working career at Kuhns and Shankweiler, a major men's clothing emporium at 7th and Hamilton. In 1948 he was president of the Kiwanis Club.  During that era,  many men belonged to one service club or another.

He and his wife Anne lived near 12th and Linden, where his row house yard was dominated by a summer vegetable garden.  They had an outside cellar entrance,  basement stove and sink to facilitate canning vegetables.  

Their long, old harvest table shown above probably came from his rural childhood home in Orefield.  By summer's end it was covered with mason jars filled with vegetables, like those grown in hundreds of other backyard gardens across Allentown.

Morning Call Malarkey

Mike Miorelli published an editorial on Sunday about the charges against Ce-Ce Gerlach. He defended the paper not publishing the allegations against her before the election...  But there was never a political consideration given to not publishing that story. We would have done the same for any politician, or official for that matter, of either party.

Mr. Miorelli, not quite for any politician. You certainly didn't extend that courtesy to Emma Tropiano, when you assigned a reporter to ambush her at the Women's Club debate.

You certainly didn't extend that courtesy to me in 2005,  when your daily debate promo only showed pictures of two candidates, when there were three on the ballot. In addition to excluding me from the mayoral debate, you never ran a profile on me, or published my picture.

You certainly didn't hesitate to write an explosive article about Marty Northstein, right before the congressional election.

Mike Miorelli can claim that the paper treats everybody fairly, but its victims know better.  

UPDATE JULY 6: Blogger Bernie O'Hare reacts to Miorelli's explanation.

A Fixture of Hamilton Street's Past

The store cabinet shown above began its commercial life at Edwin H.Young's,  one of Allentown's first drug stores, located at 639 Hamilton Street. At some point in the mid 1930's Lloyd Buchman acquired the shelf and drawers for his book store at 920 Hamilton Street.  Aral Hollenbach acquired the business from Buchman's widow, Florence, and moved it to 1021 Hamilton.  After Hollenbach died, his widow Naomi continued operating the store, still called Buchman's, and stayed in business until the mid 1990's.

The drawer and shelf unit, with such a long Allentown history, is for sale by Alderfer Auction this coming Thursday.

Link to sale. 

Ce-Ce's Morning Call Merry-Go-Round

Just when I thought I was done writing about Ce-Ce Gerlach and The Morning Call, another doozy graces the paper... Paul Muschick, the columnist with whom I usually agree,  defends the embattled council woman. He thinks that she shouldn't resign, even citing that Pawlowski stayed on as mayor until forced out by his court conviction.  He argues that Ce-Ce hasn't been convicted yet, and is henceforth entitled to retain her council seat. I wish that columnist Paul was writing satire, but unfortunately he's serious.

Paul Muschick sets the Allentown governance bar pretty low when Pawlowski is the gold standard. Paul cites that you're innocent until proven guilty, but in Ce-Ce's case she has admitted dropping the boy off at the tent city and not reporting it, which is illegal for a social worker.

Ce-Ce championed for increased social worker response, financed by defunding the police, but ironically personified the weakness with that ill-conceived theory. 

The Morning Call has taken to printing exclusive reports, only visible to paying subscribers.  That  strategy eludes me as a business incentive.  In the case of this particular column by Muschick, perhaps paying customers shouldn't have to see it.