With highs in the 80s and mostly sunny skies for much of day, Saturday offered a perfect chance to pack up the family, jump in the car ... and hang out at the local sewer plant.
Hundreds of Pittsburghers seemed to think so, anyway, as they converged on the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority’s treatment plant.
It was the 13th open house at the 59-acre Woods Run facility. The goal, said authority spokeswoman Jeanne Clark, is “to get people to understand what Alcosan is all about, to help them learn what they can do for clean water, and to have a lot of fun.”
Staffed largely with Alcosan volunteers, the event offered 40 exhibits and tours of the facility, which each day treats 250 million gallons of sewage from Pittsburgh and 82 other municipalities.
Attractions included games for kids, a walk-through “virtual sewer,” and an aquarium displaying fish caught near Alcosan’s Ohio River discharge point. Specimens included long-nosed gar, smallmouth bass and even a (presumably escaped) koi.
Such attractions have drawn repeat visitors like Lawrence Capozzolo, whose family was making its fifth visit from their home in Glen Osborne. “It’s interesting to realize all the things they have to do to treat what you are putting down the drain,” he said.
Six-year-old Aiden Williams, of Gibsonia, was more equivocal — though his mother, April Williams, said he’d enjoyed activities like “Fishing for Garbage.”
“I’d like to work here, but it’s too stinky,” said Aiden. “I’d like to be a farmer.”
(In fact, the air around the plant was generally sweeter than that surrounding many farms. And as one exhibit noted, some Alcosan-treated sewage is converted into “biosolids” that fertilize grazing land.)
This year’s open house marked a pivotal moment. Alcosan has long been negotiating with federal authorities on how to contend with “wet weather events” — periods when stormwater backs up the entire system, and raw sewage is released into area waterways.
Ms. Clark said Alcosan hopes to have a final agreement in place by year’s end, but it won’t be easy. Stopping sewage discharges could cost $3 billion, prompting the agency to impose a 17 percent rate hike last year, with 11-percent hikes this year and planned for 2016 and 2017.
Tour guides explained the regulatory forces driving such hikes, and Alcosan may also have found an alternate target for local resentment: Cleveland.
This year’s open house featured a tongue-in-cheek “Flush Cleveland” rivalry with that city’s Northeast Ohio Regional Sewer District, which also held an open-house Saturday. The two authorities competed for bragging rights in event attendance and social-media mentions.
“We toured Pittsburgh’s open-house last year, and thought we could do better,” said Jeannie Chapman, a spokeswoman for Cleveland’s district. She described her system as being “number one in the number-two business. Thank you and goodnight!”
For its part, Alcosan launched an ambitious marketing campaign with radio ads asserting, “When you’ve got to go, you’ve got to … Go Pittsburgh!”
Alcosan was hoping for a record 2,500 visitors, though by Saturday afternoon, Ms. Clark said it was “too early to tell” who had won. But Alcosan may have been helped by a wet-weather event for once: It was raining in Cleveland.
Chris Potter: cpotter@post-gazette.com or 412-263-2533.
First Published: September 20, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
