Media, PA News: Everybody's Home Page

Friends of Glen Providence Park group seeks to protect park

Jul 29

A new group of Media Borough residents has formed an interest group to protect Glen Providence Park and affect the outcome of the 3rd Street Dam construction.

They have set up a FaceBook page for Friends of Glen Providence Park:

We are a group of citizens around Media, PA who want to preserve and enhance the natural resource of Glen Providence Park.A portion of this park is now under threat from the planned repair of the 3rd Street bridge/dam. The current design would fill in over 100 feet of the park where there is currently a waterfall, pool, wetlands and mature trees, replacing them with a grassy slope.

We would like there to be public input in the design for the bridge/dam repair.

The history of the 3rd Street Bridge repair is addressed in several posts at https://mediapanews.com/tag/3rd-street-dam/

Upper Providence for Open Space has been wonderfully supportive and posted our information on their website: http://www.upperprovidenceforopenspace.memberlodge.org/

You can find a trail map here: http://www.co.delaware.pa.us/depts/glenprov.html

The group’s founder, Stephanie Gaboriault, was the former 2nd Saturday committee chair of the Media Arts Council, and lives directly next to the park on Park’s Edge Lane.

Gaboriault:

“We formed the group in response to the immediate threat we see to the park from the proposed 3rd Street Dam design. The design removes the waterfall, the pool, and the wetlands … Our short term goal is to see if there’s any way to have less negative impact on the park.”
“Long term, we want to be stewards of the park and increase usage of the park. There used to be lots of public events at the park … there used to be fireworks, there used to be concerts. Not that we want to reproduce those specific things, but long-term we’d like to have more events in the park.”

She encourages “anyone who loves the park”, who cares about the bridge design, or who wants to be involved going forward to join the group Friends of Glen Providence Park on FaceBook.

The group has had one official meeting on July 14th, but plans to meet regularly during the design process.

Interested parties can also email the group at , or join Friends of Glen Providence Park on FaceBook.

Additional reading

One comment

  1. TheRyck /

    I enjoy walking through the trails in the park. The bridge project provides a unique opportunity to make improvements to the park. I am looking forward to attending the meeting and participating in the public comment session.

    Although the waterfall is a nice feature visually, but I’m not sure it’s best for the stream itself. It has much potential to cause scour and erosion, which can undermine the bridge structure. The proposed design may be an improvement to the current condition.

    I believe DEP will be reviewing this plan in terms of the disturbance to wetlands. It’s my understanding that if a certain acreage of wetlands is proposed to be disturbed, then the applicant would be required to rebuild twice as many wetlands elsewhere on the site. I’m not certain what the threshold is for that acreage. It may be as little as 0.1 acre. If the proposed disturbance is below that, the permit requirements are less stringent for the applicant.