JOHNSTOWN — A Stoystown man said he lost more than fish when his pond was drained by contractors working at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

George Lasure said it was a place where he reflected on his late daughter, who died in a car accident at the age of 29.

“The pond was very special,” he said. “This was a pond I fished with my daughter. They stole my memories.”

Lasure found the problem a year ago while visiting the property – not his primary residence – in Shade Township about a mile and a half from the memorial’s entrance.

“A lot of mornings or evenings that I am thinking about my daughter, I just stop there and reflect,” he said.

“The one morning I stopped and I noticed my pond was really, really low. I thought there was a hole in it or something.”

But a witness told Lasure that he had seen trucks at the pond.

“He thought I was selling water,” Lasure recalled. “He said (he had seen) tanker after tanker for a couple days straight just pumping water out.

“But no one even inquired about getting water.”

Lasure said the truck drivers ignored no trespassing signs and left deep ruts that still remain.

Because he was given a description of the vehicles, Lasure was able to track them to the Flight 93 Memorial site, where preparations were under way for the 10th anniversary of the crash.

He believes water from his pond was mixed with seed mulch in a process known as hydroseeding.

When visitors saw beautiful vegetation during 10th-anniversary visits, Lasure’s pond was nearly empty and his fish were dead.

He called in a fish biologist who told him the pond, which was 7 feet deep in some places, was “so low, the water heated up and it killed all the fish in there,” Lasure said.

The aquatic expert told him it would take from three to five years to get the pond back to its former healthy condition – and the cost is expected to be between $10,000 and $15,000.

Lasure said no one he talked to denied what had happened but he said they refuse to feel any obligation to correct the matter.

For its part, the National Park Service said the problem lies with the company it hired to do the work.

“The NPS really doesn’t have an official position on the situation because it’s really a private matter between the subcontractor and the landowner,” said Lindy Allen at the Denver Service Center of the National Park Service.

The landscape contract for Flight 93 Memorial includes a joint venture by Wallace & Pancher Construction Inc. of Hermitage, Mercer County, and Kinsley Construction of York.

Kinsley’s attorney, Barbara Sardella, sent the following response by email just after

3 p.m. Friday:

“This matter does not involve a dispute with us, but rather one between Mr. and Mrs. Lasure and the landscape contractor, Arrow Wallace Pancher (joint venture),” Sardella wrote. “It is our current understanding that the parties involved are working towards an amicable resolution that would more than fully compensate the Lasures for any damages they allegedly sustained.”

Phone calls to Wallace & Pancher were not immediately returned.

Lasure contacted everyone else he could think of to resolve the issue.

He talked to the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission, Somerset County commissioners, U.S. Rep. Bill Shuster and local and state police.

He got no help from any of them.

The pond is filled again but is nearly devoid of life, Lasure said.

“I started putting in a handful of bluegills, because I can’t stand it being completely empty,” he said.

Once crowded with bass, crappie, bluegills, shiners and “a little bit of everything,” Lasure said the pond now is “nothing.”

“We had a lot of good times there,” he said. “Everyone enjoyed it because you were practically guaranteed to catch a fish.”

Although Lasure respects what the National Park Service is doing at the memorial, he feels the agency is being callous regarding his loss and a place he considers sacred.

“I am not against the memorial in any way, shape or form,” he said. “But for all the pains they go through for the families there, they couldn’t care less about our daughter and our family.

“This is hard for me still to talk about.”



Reporter Randy Griffith contributed to this report.

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