In a city where pretty much everyone has a favorite park, seeing yours go to seed is a daily annoyance, particularly when a passel of phone calls to the people in charge only nets an equal amount of buck-passing.
Gail Carter had called every appropriate government number by the time she got down to me Monday morning. She wanted to tell me about the beloved green space across from her Hill District home, Robert E. Williams Memorial Park.
It’s commonly called Herron Hill Park and the walkway around its reservoir is a popular place to view the fireworks whenever they go off a few miles west — but only when you can see the skyline. Right now the weeds are 10 feet tall and higher at the prime viewing location, and the Golden Triangle is only a rumor from there.
The sidewalks that frame the stone wall surrounding the park are pretty much gone, too. The wall itself could use some TLC, and the grass hadn’t been mowed since July 7 — until a contractor sent a mowing crew out Tuesday afternoon.
It had reached this point because, despite this being a reservoir that dates to 1880, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority can’t say where its maintenance responsibility begins and ends. An authority spokesperson said Tuesday it didn’t send out that mowing crew, and guesses the city did because it has a piece of this park, too.
The PWSA had more pressing problems this week, with bird droppings potentially seeping through the torn cover of the Lanpher Reservoir in Shaler. That led to a boil-water advisory for the entire North Side, Millvale and Reserve, which went into effect hours after I walked this park with Ms. Carter and her neighbor Lynell Nunn.
The advisory also came on the day a consulting firm hired to study the PWSA described the authority as “on its last leg,” and offered eight restructuring options because its current setup just isn’t working.
Making sure the water is drinkable is unquestionably a greater priority than mowing the grass, but any competent agency ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. The PWSA intends to meet with city officials at the park next Tuesday to walk the park and figure out who’s responsible for what.
“We are more than happy to take care of whatever is our responsibility,” Rachel Rampa of the PWSA said.
Councilman Dan Lavelle, who represents the Hill, will seek such resolution at the Tuesday meeting.
“Every single year I have to fight with the PWSA to clean up that park,” Mr. Lavelle said Monday.
He said the authority let its maintenance contract lapse there, and when he suggested long ago to let the city maintain the authority property in exchange for reimbursement, that idea went nowhere. The city public works department has had to pick up the slack before any big event there.
“This is a yearly fight,” Mr. Lavelle said.
It’s more than that for neighboring homeowners. When I was ushered into the Carter home Monday, Gail’s 94-year-old mother, Annie, was having a bowl of cereal at the dining room table. Before I could ask who this Robert E. Williams was, she said the park was named for her oldest brother. Known to most as “Pappy,” Mr. Williams was the first black police magistrate in Pittsburgh and said to be the first black ward chair in the state of Pennsylvania.
“My parents only had nine of us,” Mrs. Carter said. “They told us we all had better be busy.”
An older sister, Thelma Lovette, was 80 when she ran in the Western Pennsylvania leg of the torch relay for the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The YMCA on Centre Avenue is named for her.
In short, there’s not a lot of quit in this family.
“We’ve been looking at this park all of our lives,” said Gail Carter, a retired Allegheny County sheriff’s deputy who was a year old when her parents moved into the home. “To see it like this is heartbreaking.
“It’s been getting taken care of and now, all of a sudden, what’s changed?”
The PWSA needs to mind its water and have the city mind this park.
Brian O’Neill: boneill@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1947 or Twitter @brotheroneill.
First Published: August 30, 2017, 10:00 a.m.
