SCRANTON — Heavy rain regularly swamped part of Pittston Avenue in Minooka over seven decades.
Now, a recently completed $1.8 million stormwater improvement project should resolve the problem, Mayor Paige Cognetti said Wednesday. She and others gathered on Kane Street near Pittston Avenue to announce the completion of underground work that started in late June.
She termed the flood-prone area and work to resolve it as the “the definition of legacy stormwater projects” that the city has addressed throughout the community in recent years using federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars.
Shawn Walsh, owner for the past 25 years of Montage Motors on Pittston Avenue at Kane Street, said that area “since the ’50s” has suffered from street flooding from an inadequate stormwater system. Kane Street and other roads slope down to a bowl area along Pittston Avenue and the stormwater upgrade should be a big improvement, he said.
“It’s been a huge problem for us,” Walsh said of street flooding. “I’ve been fighting for this for — I’ve been here 25 years. I’m very happy to see it completed. It’s going to be a big relief, not just for us, but for this whole block.”
While there has not yet been heavy rain since the completion of the project, Walsh and city officials hope and think it will go a long way to eliminate episodes of routine street flooding.
The project installed nearly 4,000 feet of piping, half of which replaced 18-inch diameter pipes with 36-inch diameter pipes, and the other half added new 36-inch diameter pipes, said Clinton Sorber of the project engineer firm Verdantas, which was previously known as Borton-Lawson.
“That increases how much water that pipe can carry by several factors,” Sorber said. “I don’t want to say we’re anxious for a big storm event, but we’d like to see it work.”
Crews discovered that part of one of the old pipes actually sloped upward, hampering its ability to drain, he said.
City Business Administrator Eileen Cipriani also said a vendor camera scoping a pipe under Pittston Avenue discovered a big blockage.
“We ended up finding a pile of bricks that was probably an old basin that had fallen apart, came down and was blocking it, and they removed that,” Cipriani said. “That was just recently, so we haven’t seen if we’ve had a big storm to see if that was the culprit” causing part of the street flooding.
Walsh also said a nearby residential development built in the 1970s on higher ground but without any stormwater drainage contributes to the flooding down below, because rain “just comes down here like a river.”
Along with drainage pipes under Kane Street, the project installed new drains in the Hamm Court alley where none previously existed, Walsh said.
The project also should reduce the need for the city Fire Department to regularly respond to that area for pump-outs of stormwater flooding, Cognetti said.
“It’s such a relief for us that you won’t have to deal with that anymore,” the mayor said.
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, left, discusses completed stormwater projects near Montage Motors on Pittston Ave in Scranton Wednesday, October 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
A vehicle drives past a drain on Kane Street in Scranton Wednesday, October 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti discusses completed stormwater projects near Montage Motors on Pittston Ave in Scranton Wednesday, October 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Civil Project Manager at Verdantas Clinton Sorber speaks about the stormwater project next to Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti off of Pittston Avenue in Scranton Wednesday, October 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)
Shawn Walsh, center, talks on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, about stormwater flooding that regularly has swamped the area of his Montage Motors business at Pittston Avenue and Kane Street in the Minooka section of Scranton, as Scranton Mayor Paige G. Cognetti, at right, and city Business Administrator Eileen Cipriani, at left, listen. They and others gathered there to announce the recent completion of a $1.8 million city stormwater upgrade project in that area. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
A new storm drain on newly paved Kane Street in the Minooka section of Scranton, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, and part of a $1.8 million stormwater-management improvement project in that area that bottoms out into a bowl near Pittston Avenue. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
A new storm drain on newly paved Kane Street in the Minooka section of Scranton, on Wednesday, Oct. 21, 2026, and part of a $1.8 million stormwater-management improvement project in that area that bottoms out into a bowl near Pittston Avenue. (JIM LOCKWOOD / STAFF PHOTO)
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Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti, left, discusses completed stormwater projects near Montage Motors on Pittston Ave in Scranton Wednesday, October 21, 2026. (SEAN MCKEAG / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER)