Cooperation Must Flow to Cleanse Pittsburgh Region's Water

PITTSBURGH, Pennsylvania, January 7, 2005 (ENS) - Solving the serious water quality problems of southwestern Pennsylvania requires a comprehensive approach based on watershed management, says a new report from the National Academies' National Research Council. Contaminated stormwater and sewer overflows, livestock waste, and acid mine drainage all contribute to the degraded quality of the region's water, the study found.

Tasked with assessing the region's water quality problems and recommending ways to solve them, the committee took aim at the current fragmentation of water planning and management in southwestern Pennsylvania, including Pittsburgh. Federal and state governments, 11 counties, hundreds of municipalities, and other entities all play roles, but with little coordination or cooperation, the study found.

"Creating a cooperative regional effort will be challenging," said Jerome Gilbert, chair of the National Research Council (NRC) committee that wrote the report, and a consulting engineer in Orinda, California. "Southwestern Pennsylvania's water planning issues need to be addressed on that scale, using a comprehensive approach that takes into account multiple uses, needs, and impacts, such as water supply, habitat protection, recreation, and future development," he said.

The most pressing water quality issue with the potential to cause human health problems is microbial contamination from improperly managed human wastewater, the committee reports.

The Monongahela River runs through downtown Pittsburgh. (Photo courtesy CDC)

In many tributaries, microbial water quality does not meet standards even in dry weather, which suggested to the committee that contamination from failing septic systems is migrating into the streams.

Livestock management practices in rural areas are likely adding pathogens to streams as well, though scarce data made it impossible to determine how much, the committee said.

In addition to biological contaminants, acid drainage from abandoned coal mines continues to pollute area streams, though this water quality problem is broader than southwestern Pennsylvania and is being addressed by existing state and federal programs.

Gilbert and his committee found that the Pittsburgh region’s current fragmented system of water and sewer service delivery, where municipalities, water and sewer authorities, and individual home owners are each responsible for portions of the whole system, is not a cost-efficient or effective approach to keeping rivers, streams, lakes, and groundwater clean.

"The region's waters have long been an important asset, but for the area to reach its full potential in terms of recreational use of the rivers and riverbank development, it is important to clean up the waters further and meet standards for water quality," Gilbert said.

An unfenced pasture along Slab Cabin Run allowed cattle unlimited access to the southwest Pennsylvania stream, producing erosion and pollution problems. (Photo courtesy EPA)

The study was sponsored by the Allegheny Conference on Community Development, a 60 year old regional organization whose membership includes large corporations, foundations, banks and universities.

"The challenge of establishing a regional approach to water infrastructure management is so big and complicated that we will need federal help in terms of both funding and regulatory support," said F. Michael Langley, CEO of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. "And we're not alone - other regions around the country are facing similar challenges."

The NRC report affirmed the findings of the April 2002 report "Investing in Clean Water," compiled by the Southwestern Pennsylvania Water and Sewer Infrastructure Project Steering Committee, that documented the region’s water quality issues.

Dr. Jared Cohon chairs the Steering Committee of the Allegheny Conference on Community Development. (Photo courtesy CMU)

The report outlines a technical framework called the Three Rivers Comprehensive Watershed Assessment and Response Plan (CWARP) to deal with these problems.

The committee says that CWARP's five step framework could be used to identify and assess water problems, model their progression, formulate alternative strategies for addressing them, and implement strategies in an adaptive, flexible way to get the most benefit from dollars invested in water quality improvement.

The report explains in detail how CWARP could be implemented in southwestern Pennsylvania, but it could also be used as a model for other regions, as many of the problems and challenges addressed in this study can be found around the country.

In southwestern Pennsylvania's case, CWARP should be applied at each of four scales - the river basin, the metropolitan and multicounty region, rural areas, and the urban core.

For each scale, the report suggests institutional structures to help unify the municipalities' various efforts to improve water quality.

For the metropolitan region, the Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission is probably the best choice to lead water planning, the committee said.

But that commission would need to broaden its representation and should establish a Three Rivers Regional Water Forum to include representatives from local governments, the private sector, academia, and environmental organizations - any group that would play some role in implementing CWARP.

The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN), which is responsible for managing wastewater for the City of Pittsburgh and 82 surrounding communities, should re-evaluate its draft long-term plan for controlling sewage and stormwater overflows, the committee said, in light of the recently completed municipal consent orders initiated by the EPA to enforce compliance with the Clean Water Act.

ALCOSAN technicians test wastewater (Photo courtesy ALCOSAN)

Located along the Ohio River on Pittsburgh’s Northside, ALCOSAN treats an average of 200 million gallons of wastewater daily. A joint city-county authority operating under state guidelines, ALCOSAN receives no tax monies and generates all revenues from ratepayers.

The CWARP framework is recommended for the development of ALCOSAN's final control plan and similar documents because of the data limitations and technical and institutional complexities that exist in southwestern Pennsylvania, the committee said.

The committee suggests that ALCOSAN and other wastewater treatment providers should investigate decentralized and innovative alternatives such as storing and treating overflows at remote locations or in nearby abandoned mines - a solution currently being evaluated by the Township of Upper St. Clair.

A first step toward any of these options would be development of a system for real-time control of overflows - a method that uses software to monitor, model, and manage flows.

Financing water quality improvements will not be easy given the magnitude of the problems, the report acknowledges, recommending that in choosing among strategies yielded by the CWARP process, organizations should let cost-effectiveness be their primary guide.

Although the challenges of solving the region's water quality problems are many, Cohon that says as the region solves its own problems it can lead the entire nation towards cleaner water.

"One of the important outcomes of the study is that southwestern Pennsylvania has been given the opportunity to set the national standard for how regions can collaborate on their efforts to efficiently address water quality problems," said Cohon, a challenge faced throughout the nation."