The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, under a federal mandate to reduce storm-water runoff, is enlisting community partners in the cause. Last week, Alcosan announced $9 million in matching funds for 18 municipalities, including the city of Pittsburgh, for projects that will keep an estimated 70 million gallons of water out of rivers and other waterways each year. That’s a strong return on Alcosan’s investment.
During rainstorms, storm and sanitary sewers cannot always handle the excess water, which ends up polluting rivers and streams. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has ordered Alcosan, the municipalities its serves and the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority to eliminate overflows totaling about 9 billion gallons annually. The sooner this happens, the better, but they may have until 2036 to get the job done.
The mission could be accomplished with new pipes, treatment plants and other “gray” infrastructure, and that was Alcosan’s initial thought process. Now, however, it’s committed to controlling as much water as possible through green projects. This is where the new grant program, the Green Revitalization of Our Waterways initiative, comes in.
Alcosan, which calls the program “one of the largest of its kind in the nation,” received inquiries about 59 projects and selected 32 for the initial round of funding. The amount of each grant was based partly on how much water will be controlled. The awards included $80,800 for construction of a rain garden in a Crafton park, $86,335 for a green streetscape project in Etna’s business district, $250,800 for a rain garden in a city-owned lot in Garfield and $494,000 for another green project encompassing 10 vacant lots in that neighborhood.
Alcosan and its partners have a long way to go in meeting the federal mandate, and it’s hard to imagine that all of these efforts will fully solve the enormous problem. Yet the grant program is a good way to get some of the work underway, generate creative solutions and involve many municipalities and residents in the process. Additional funding likely will be made available, so the initiative has the potential to pick up steam, with the initial recipients’ success stories fueling others’ interest.
Alcosan isn’t just throwing money at a problem. Recipients get the agency’s technical expertise during project planning and implementation, and they must pledge to maintain the green infrastructure long term. Some of the projects also will beautify their neighborhoods. There’s much to like about this program.
First Published: February 18, 2017, 5:00 a.m.