The cost of recertifying the levee in Williamsport is closing in on $2 million.

And that, unfortunately, is just the start.

The cost of repairing crosspipes in the levee will push the project cost to $8 million.

Other costs – replacement of an “I” wall with a T-shaped wall on the Lycoming Creek side of the levee – will push the cost to $16 million in the next five years.

And it’s not as if there is an option on whether to do the work. The levee must be recertified in order to prevent those in the floodplain near it from having to pay for flood insurance, a development that would be extremely costly to homeowners and would severely damage the local real estate market.

Well, part of the work is being paid for with a $2 million state Redevelopment Assistance Capital Projects grant. But do the math. That’s a long way from $16 million.

Gov. Wolf has rather shrewdly attached funding of the levee work to a gas severance tax proposal.

Lawmakers from our region should find out just how that would work and be sure that the long-term gas severance tax receipts won’t just be swallowed up by the state’s General Fund before taking that bait.

We would like to think something as important as protecting against flooding attached to the Susquehanna River would be worthy of other state-funded support.

Our guess is that if we got a look at the state’s budget ledger sheet of expenses, we would find countless items less worthy – particularly in the Pennsylvania’s more populous centers – that get major funding support annually.

Our population center is worth protecting, too, and we are not sure it requires a tax on one of the state’s major economic drivers.