This article was funded by LebTown donors as part of our Civic Impact Reporting Project.
A traffic fatality that occurred in February 2023 at a Bell & Evans poultry plant has prompted a proposal for onsite changes to vehicular flow at that location.
Bell & Evans was required to file a land development plan with Bethel Township and its planning commission as part of a move to improve traffic safety at its Number 2 plant, which sits adjacent to Esther’s Diner in Fredericksburg along Route 22.
The poultry company, which has facilities located throughout that town in northern Lebanon County, is taking steps to separate tractor-trailers from other vehicles and pedestrian traffic at that site.
However, a stormwater management plan was eventually filed instead after the planning commission agreed to waive the land development plan. That happened since many of the concerns or questions that may arise are addressed in the stormwater management plan.
The decision to redesign traffic flow came after a tractor-trailer accident in the parking lot of the plant at 2929 SR 22 on the evening of Feb. 17, 2023. A 64-year-old Oklahoma woman died from injuries sustained when she was “struck and run over by a truck tractor in the east trailer parking area.”
As reported by LebTown based on information released by troopers from the Pennsylvania State Police Jonestown Patrol and Criminal Investigation units, the woman succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead on the scene by the Lebanon County Coroner’s office.
The 2023 Lebanon County Coroner’s statistical report states her death was accidental and that she died from multiple blunt force trauma injuries. The police report noted that no Bell & Evans personnel were involved in the incident, and that the victim and driver were both employed by a third-party company.
After the accident, Bell & Evans officials had their engineering firm design a plan beginning last fall to change the traffic flow at the plant and on Esther’s Restaurant’s property.
Bell & Evans and the lot occupied by Esther’s Restaurant are both owned by the Scott Sechler family. The real estate is held through Bell & Evans Realty LLC.
However, that plan would have required approval from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. The decision to avoid involving PennDOT in this project led to a different traffic solution being developed.
A representative from a Lebanon-based engineering firm explained the new details to the Bethel Township Planning Commission at their Aug. 20 meeting. The new plan alters onsite traffic flow by removing Ether’s from the original proposal.
“This particular plan does not get PennDOT involved either,” said Alex Kinzey, a traffic engineer with Steckbeck Engineering & Surveying Inc. “There’s no PennDOT involvement because there is now no mixing of traffic with Esther’s (patron traffic).”
Planning commission chairwoman Beverly Martel explained highlights of the stormwater plan to LebTown following that meeting.
“Right now there’s a walkway that comes down here to Esther’s,” said Martel. “They are taking that walkway and making it wider into a driveway. That driveway is going to come behind the Esther’s building and come out to where the trucks come in here (the plant entrance at Blue Mountain Road). They are trying to eliminate the inter-mingling of trucks and cars.”
That driveway, according to Kinzey, will contain a Jersey barrier to prevent the co-mingling of tractor-trailers with other vehicles driven by employees coming to and leaving the plant.
A Jersey barrier (aka Jersey wall or Jersey bump) is a modular concrete or plastic barrier employed to separate lanes of traffic. It is designed to minimize vehicle damage in cases of incidental contact while still preventing vehicle crossovers resulting in a likely head-on collision.
Township engineer Matt Mack said in a telephone interview that the barrier will be on one side of the driveway to prevent traffic from driving onto the restaurant’s property to gain access to Route 22.
Martel said employees currently are unable to turn left from the plant onto Route 22 East from the side of the facility that runs parallel to the highway.
Kinzey said at the June 13 meeting of township supervisors that location is the plant’s main entrance and is used by employees to enter and exit the facility. (Tractor-trailers enter and exit Plant 2 via Blue Mountain Road, which is on the east side of the facility.)
The inability for employee vehicles to turn left, or east, onto Route 22 at the main entrance when exiting the plant is problematic, according to Kinzey.
Kinzey noted at that same meeting that car traffic was exiting the plant’s main entrance onto Route 22 westbound, then making illegal U-turns to travel east towards Reading.
“What they’re finding is that team members had to go all the way out to the (red) light and make a (legal) U-turn there, but they are not necessarily obeying that,” said Kinzey.
Since the original plan that was discussed on June 13 would require changes to Esther’s property, questions arose from a township supervisor about the restaurant’s future.
Founded in 1956, Esther’s is a landmark institution for Lebanon County residents and with travelers from beyond the Lebanon Valley.
“So we all know that Esther’s is on a time…,” said supervisor Bruce Light, who paused and didn’t finish that thought before Bell & Evans chief operating officer Michael Bracrella gave a response, at the June 13 meeting of the township supervisors.
“Yeah, I wish I knew that timeline,” replied Bracrella, to which Light said, “Yeah.”
When asked by LebTown at their July 11 meeting concerning a public comment from a township supervisor about Esther’s future, Light said that was verbal speculation since rumors about the restaurant have been floating around town.
Supervisor board chairman Richard Rudy followed Light’s comment by adding “for years.”
That question was seemingly answered with the filing of the stormwater management plan since it requires minimal changes to Plant 2 and avoids involving the 68-year-old eatery.
Kinzey said during the planning commission meeting that Bell & Evans has no plans to sell the restaurant. (Whether that was in response to that June 13 meeting discussion is unclear since Kinzey declined to answer any questions from LebTown following the Aug. 20 meeting, saying he was uncomfortable replying to post-meeting questions from the media without a client representative being present.)
“Bell & Evans has no intent of selling either property in any kind of future,” said Kinzey during the meeting. “Just to throw that out there, to increase your reassurance of that.”
As part of its stormwater management plan, Kinzey notes in an Aug. 19 letter to supervisors and planning commission members that impervious (non-draining) surfaces will decrease by 414 square feet and that “the removal of the small retaining wall and minor grading near the existing basin still provides adequate volume within the basin.”
Documents concerning the stormwater plan for this project were obtained by LebTown through a Right-to-Know request. That same letter notes the “access easement agreement is in the process of being prepared, executed, and recorded.”
“It was confirmed with the Township’s Engineer (Mack) that no stormwater operations and maintenance agreement will be necessary for this project, as no BMPs (best management practices) are proposed and there is a net reduction in impervious area,” Kinzey wrote in a letter to the planning commission in response to a plan review by Mack.
“The letter is fairly clean, they are not asking for any waivers or anything and there is no increase in impervious areas,” said Mack during the Aug. 20 planning commission meeting. “They have some stuff to give to (township solicitor) Andrew (Morrow) to work out … including maintenance.”
Kinzey noted that two gates to control truck traffic flow will be erected near the intersection of the plant’s Blue Mountain Road entrance to help keep employees from being run over by a commercial vehicle.
“That eliminates that issue by separating the two,” he added.
The stormwater management plan was unanimously approved by the planning commission to be forwarded to supervisors for their review.
The stormwater plan will most likely will be formally approved at the Thursday, Sept. 12, meeting of supervisors. Supervisors meet at 7 p.m. on the second Thursday of each month at the township building at 3015 S. Pine St., Fredericksburg.
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