HARRISBURG — Each year, the Governor’s Center for Local Government Services presents the Governor’s Awards for Local Government Excellence to recognize local officials for their successes in undertaking innovative initiatives to improve the quality of life in their communities.
This year, Dwight D. Hoare, PE, manager since 2002 of the St. Marys Area Water Authority in Elk County, has been given this award.
The hope is that the awards may serve as inspiration or as best management practices for local government officials throughout Pennsylvania.
Hoare is the Immediate Past President of the PA Municipal Authorities Association and a past Region 7 Director. He also serves on PMAA ‘s Conference Committee, Executive Committee, Water Subcommittee, Nominating Committee, Organizational Development Committee, and the Program Advisory Committee.
In 2008, DEP determined that St. Marys must spend millions of dollars to armor their earthen dam due to the theoretical rainfall from the 1942 Smethport Storm. Hoare hired Applied Weather Associates of Colorado to study the need for reanalysis of the storm, which recorded a world record rainfall of 30.5 inches of rain in a 4.5 hour period.
St. Marys pushed for this project because it is commonly believed in the industry that the storm was overestimated and that rainfall was actually less. This resulted in the Department of Environmental Protection’s Probable Maximum Precipitation Study and Evaluation tool, a study providing gridded values for all drainage basins within Pennsylvania, including regions adjacent to the Commonwealth that provide runoff into drainage basins within the state.
Probable maximum precipitation (PMP) is a deterministic estimate of the theoretical maximum depth of precipitation that can occur over a specific area, at a given time of the year. Parameters to estimate PMP were developed and subsequently refined in the numerous site-specific, statewide, and regional PMP studies completed since the early 1990s. The results of this study are now the basis for estimating the design rainfall amounts for all dams in a large portion of the northeastern US.
St. Marys is now performing a site- specific study using the new rainfall estimates to determine if any armoring project of their dam is necessary, an innovative approach resulting in cost savings, increased productivity, improved risk management and overall service delivery efficiency. The work is expected to be completed this spring.
