Mark Snatchko waded through receding floodwater in the early morning of April 12, 2024, to reach his home, where he tried to sleep but couldn’t. For the prior seven hours, he had waited out the storm on the steps of an Oakdale convenience store. By 8 a.m., he was back at his neighboring garage — Our Cars Auto Detailing and Tire Sales — to assess the damage.
Thick, smelly mud coated the floor and machinery. With “little to no notice” from the fire department, Snatchko hadn’t had time to move equipment to higher ground, as he usually does when storms threaten to overflow the creeks. He closed the shop for two weeks as he cleaned and replaced about $20,000 in equipment. It was the third flood in his garage since he moved it to the center of town in 2018. Now 68, he expects the next one will force him into early retirement.
After the remnants of Hurricane Ivan swept through Oakdale in 2004, filling it like a soup bowl, public officials reassured residents it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. Businesses and homeowners rebuilt their town of just under 1,500 with government-issued loans, flood insurance payments and personal savings.
This summer’s barrage of floods across the region, including a deadly incident in West Virginia on June 14, has largely spared Oakdale — a borough 15 miles west of Pittsburgh. But when it rains, residents watch the creeks nervously. Even short storms will cause minor floods in the town center.
After Ivan, Oakdale flooded again in 2011, 2013, 2018, 2019, twice in 2021 — on Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 — and in April 2024. While none of these floods matched the intensity of Ivan, their rapid succession drove the town to seek assistance for flood prevention projects, such as removing debris and sediment buildup from the creek beds. Another option is to build strategic dams to direct flood water away from homes and businesses.
“Whenever I was younger, and followed my dad around, it would be a few inches in the [fire] station,” said Jimmy Snatchko, the volunteer fire chief and son of Mark Snatchko, who once held that position. “Now, every time it floods, we’re getting a few feet in our station.”
After the April 2024 flood that temporarily shuttered Snatchko’s business, weary residents returned to council meetings to push for new solutions. In response, the borough petitioned the Army Corps of Engineers for help.
“We’ve had studies for studies over all these years,” Jimmy Snatchko said. The Army Corps has worked with Oakdale on flood control as far back as the 1950s, a relationship he has seen as largely fruitless until recently. “The Corps of Engineers this time actually said something needs to get done.”
After the borough engaged them, the Army Corps of Engineers renewed a study to locate solutions to the problem. According to councilman Bill Hartman, these efforts revitalized an older, completed study. The town council hoped updated methods would find lower-cost solutions and open new paths for grant applications. But a couple of months ago, officials received a message from the Army Corps informing participants the study was on hold. This, according to Mayor Steve Trusnovic, could be a good thing.
In a statement provided to Public Source, the Army Corps said they paused their Oakdale efforts to refocus on a separate, larger study that covers more of the Chartiers Creek Watershed, including Oakdale and other municipalities. This larger study is “expected to be completed by 2029.”
Trusnovic said he believes a coordinated assessment is likely to be more effective because towns upstream impact those downstream.
He has little clarity on if or when the Oakdale-specific project may resume. “As elected officials, you hate to sit there sounding like an idiot,” Trusnovic said, referencing resident questions. “You also feel abandoned because that’s what happened in our past.”
Why so much flooding?
Oakdale’s location at the bottom of a bowl-shaped valley creates a perennial flooding risk. At the center, two creeks — North Branch and Robinson Run — converge under two low-lying bridges. In a storm, the bridges catch debris, which plugs the waterways and fills the confluence like a bathtub.
Since he has been in office, state Sen. Devlin Robinson, R-Bridgeville, secured nearly $1 million in cleanup funds for Oakdale after several floods. State Rep. Jason Ortitay, R-Cecil, helped coordinate a creek cleanup around five years ago, which removed sediment and debris buildup. The borough also installed riprap — large boulders designed to move the water along the creek more quickly so it leaves town before it starts to flood.
Oakdale Council President Jonathan DeBor also pointed to the borough’s newly hired engineering firm: Lennon, Smith, Souleret Engineering, Inc. [LSSE]. The firm dedicates five to ten hours a week to coordinating flood mitigation plans, such as a new retention pond within Oakdale, and locating grants to cover the costs. For a town with only three full-time employees on payroll this is a significant addition.
While the Army Corps survey progresses, some residents and officials say they already know the sources of the increased flooding.
First, it rains harder than before. “There is a very fundamental, simple rule in physics that warmer air can hold more water,” said Ryan Utz, an aquatic ecology researcher at Chatham University. “When the atmosphere is overall warmer, it can carry more water over land and, as a result, you get bigger storms.”
Another concern, shared by more than half a dozen people Public Source spoke with, is booming housing development in North Fayette and South Fayette, which sit uphill from Oakdale. Where there used to be farms and forests, there are now miles of paved roads and driveways, which can channel rain and sediment into Oakdale. Sediment buildup raises the creekbeds, lowering their capacity to hold water, according to residents and officials.
Allegheny County requires developers to plan for stormwater runoff for new residential construction projects. “Typically, during construction, a pond is built to capture soil and runoff, and that is often converted to a retention pond,” wrote Heather Manzo, executive director of the Allegheny County Conservation District, which permits and inspects new developments over an acre in size. Some Oakdale residents and officials claim that many developments in North and South Fayette have inadequate retention ponds, pointing to some they say are overgrown, remain dry after rain or were never installed. After construction is finished, homeowners associations are typically responsible for maintenance.
North Fayette Township Manager James “JR” Mangan acknowledged that development and faulty retention ponds have increased flooding in Oakdale, where he grew up. “Most of the tributaries that enter Oakdale start in North Fayette or pass through North Fayette. So North Fayette’s obligated to work on a solution to try to restrict some of that flow to help a ton of Oakdale.” He declined to speak about specifics. However, he said North Fayette holds “developers to the highest standards as far as building retention ponds.”
Back in 2017, North Fayette held a public hearing to discuss problematic retention ponds.
“You dump a bucket in, and literally it comes out the other end because there’s no retention for the small storms. And that met regulations — I mean, 20 years ago or 30 years ago, 15 years ago, that’s the way regulations were. Since then, everything has changed,” North Fayette Township Engineer Kevin Brett said, according to a meeting transcript. Brett, an engineer for LSSE, now works for both North Fayette and Oakdale, an overlap that has improved communication between the two municipalities.
Flooding is a cost of living in Oakdale
About 10% of Oakdale’s homes and the vast majority of its businesses are built in the floodplain, according to DeBor.
Snatchko recalled the April 2024 night when he was sitting down to dinner and his son called: “Hey, if you have any cars in the garage, you’d better get down here and get ‘em out.”
He and his wife rushed to his garage in the center of town. He moved one customer’s car to higher ground, but when he returned for the second, 6 inches of water had already filled the shop. Fewer than 10 minutes later, it was up to their knees. “We have to get outta here,” he said.
Snatchko made it around the corner to the convenience store, where he watched the street turn into a river. From there, his garage was out of view, but he saw firefighting equipment float out the station’s front door. “We’ve seen cars that were parked in the middle of town here — full-size cars — it just lifts ’em.”
Matt Maximovich, who lives within Oakdale’s floodplain, has written several letters to elected officials advocating for Oakdale. He grew up in the town, and bought his house by the North Branch with his wife in 1999.
During the 2004 flood, Maximovich and his family lost their basement and first-floor possessions — yearbooks, clothes, photos and furniture. When he came to check on the house at the height of the water, he saw his shed open, sleeping bags and golf equipment flowing out. Years later, he still can’t wash the sticky mud from some of his golf clubs.
(Left) A flooding indicator along Robinson Run, in the business district of Oakdale, on July 8. (Right) Robinson Run on July 8. (Photos by Quinn Glabicki/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
Like many floodplain residents, he has since moved the boiler and electrical panels from the basement to the living room, which cost thousands of dollars, paid for in part by flood insurance. The water has not reached the first floor of his house since 2004, but even a small flood damages the basement and yard. Flood insurance, a requirement for those with a mortgage, costs Maximovich around $3,100 a year.
“ It’s almost easier dealing with a flood than it is with an insurance company,” Maximovich, 52, said.
The couple is planning to raise the foundation of their house, a lengthy and costly process. They hope that raising the house foundation will allow them to eventually sell and retire in Mexico.
Maximovich’s neighbor Theresea Locke also wishes she could sell her house, which she and her husband inherited from her mother-in-law. Once an idyllic setting to raise her family, the house has morphed into a financial nightmare. Reassured by officials after the 2004 flood that it wouldn’t happen again in her lifetime, she rebuilt using a $40,000 flood insurance payout and $80,000 in loans from the Small Business Administration.
Because she and her husband received the loans in installments, the paperwork was overwhelming. Since buying the house in 1996, it has flooded 20 times, four of them major. Sometimes, like Maximovich, Locke doesn’t bother to call her insurance because of high deductibles. Between the loans, 2008 recession and successive damage from floods, Locke’s family filed bankruptcy, which they exited only in 2017.
Federal funding, for those who can get it
In Oakdale, the floods have yet to cause any fatalities. But the Fourth of July weekend flooding in Kerrville, Texas, that killed at least 134 people, has put residents on edge.
In 2018, the body of a 64-year-old was found in nearby Bridgeville after being trapped in her car and swept downstream by flash flooding. The White House declared a state of emergency, opening up pathways for flood mitigation assistance.
Bridgeville residents and town officials organized a comprehensive flood mitigation plan, and secured millions in state and federal grant funding in the seven years since.
With these funds, the borough has reconstructed flood walls, installed sewer backflow preventers in nearly 100 homes and purchased and condemned flood-prone properties. The borough also built a “trash rack” — five large piles sticking out of a creek — designed to catch debris during a storm and create a makeshift dam, directing water into an adjacent former baseball park. In total, these efforts cost over $2 million, funded mostly by grants.
In addition, FEMA recently awarded Bridgeville a $5.3 million grant for more flood mitigation, but the funding is in limbo because of the Trump administration’s cuts to the agency.
Like Bridgeville, Oakdale has considered sacrificing its baseball field to create an emergency flood plain. But unlike Bridgeville, which has nearly 5,000 residents and 18 full-time employees, Oakdale is a smaller town with fewer residents and resources. Bridgeville’s annual budget is around $3.5 million, while Oakdale’s is around $2.1 million.
In a 2023 report, Brookings researchers wrote that local governments “must actively participate in managing their own risks” and shaping recovery, yet challenges throughout the disaster process often “stymie” even the most well-resourced communities.
“Federal resources often go to those communities that are most capable of managing them,” they wrote, “not those that most need.”
Hannah Frances Johansson is an editorial intern at Pittsburgh’s Public Source and can be reached at hannah@publicsource.org.
This story was fact-checked by Ember Duke.
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