But since the 1970s and the development of the Seven Oaks apartment complex, homes on nearby Franklin Street, and expansion at the Chester County Hospital, marshy Marshall Manor has been socked and soaked by runoff.

The runoff swells the Marshall Manor Tributary, which runs through backyards of homes on Hillside and Marshall drives, and turns the creek into a torrent, overwhelming the existing storm water system. Streets are deluged, lawns overwhelmed, soil swept away and cellars flooded.

"If we have a heavy rain the creek can go from about eight inches wide to eight feet wide," said Hillside Drive resident Ruthann Scott. "I have been here since 1968, and the shape of my back yard has changed shape so many times I can't tell you."

For 15 years Bill White, of Hillside Drive, has sought to control the flooding.

"This neighborhood was going to (heck) with water erosion. And potential is there for a major storm coming and taking out not just trees and shrubs, but (destroying) property," White said.

But relief is now on the way.

The public works department has begun a $527,000 project to install storm sewer pipe and manholes to intercept the majority of storm water before it can reach the creek and then channel the rest away from the marshy low-lying areas. Work started Jan. 14.

The project will include a hookup with some existing storm sewer pipe at 301 E. Marshall St. near South Hillside Drive and a connection with the stream itself behind South Hillside Drive to head off the surface water runoff.

The 48-inch pipe will also run north under and up the street to carry water to a discharge point behind 529 Marshall Drive.

Public Works Director Bob Wilpizeski said most but not all of the stream's water will be removed by the piping.

"The stream simply has too much water in it during (a storm)" said Wilpizeski. "So we are splitting up all the water into a pipe and a stream, and then putting it back together again on the bottom part of the neighborhood," he said.

Wilpizeski said the neighborhood's core never had an authentic storm sewer system underground to begin with. "So we are actually putting a new system in," he noted.

The borough needed to obtain easements from eight property owners to dig and remove some large trees at a cost of $25,525. Eleven rights-of-entry were also obtained.

The work will likely be finished by early to mid summer. Property landscaping and restoration will carry through to the fall, Wilpizeski said.

With all of the heavy equipment, from front end loaders to dump trucks, Wilpizesk commented, "Thus far the neighbors have very cooperative, good sports."

Weaving large pipe beneath an underground spider web of existing utilities will entail some extra deep digging, up to 20 feet deep in some areas, Wilpizeski pointed out.

"We have sanitary sewers, we have water mains, we have a gas main," he said. "That's why the excavations are so deep, because this big pipe has to clear (that)."

On Wednesday the work team made an unexpected discovery. Sixteen feet below the surface a 24-inch brick sewer pipe was uncovered.

"That indicates some time in the far distant past there was a storm sewer system through this neighborhood. Probably way before the neighborhood was even built." Wilpizeski surmised that the contour of the Marshall Manor landscape once was very different and "they must have filled it in at one time to put the neighborhood on top of it."

Council member Bill Scott, who lives in the district and has long championed the flood control project, said, "It is a community problem and there has been a community obligation to fix it and I'm glad it's being done now."

Scott noted that had modern laws restricting water runoff existed in 1950, "a number of those (Franklin Street) homes probably would not be permitted. The engineers did even know where the underground drainage pipes feed water into the stream were located."

After years of pushing the borough to protect his neighborhood, White said he feels satisfied. "I didn't expect a quick fix. We got a few years of good solid planning and it looks like its going to work.," he said.