Cleanup crews began working across the Pittsburgh area on Friday after heavy flooding wreaked havoc when the Ohio River overran its river banks this week.
During the early morning hours, crews worked to remove water from the “bathtub” section of the Parkway East, which was heavily flooded on Thursday.
The area, located between the Grant Street exit and Fort Pitt Bridge, was reopened to traffic at approximately 11:45 a.m. Friday, along with the ramp from Grant Street to westbound I-376 and the ramp from the Boulevard of the Allies to westbound I-376.
PennDOT crews pumped the water and cleaned mud and debris from the area once the river receded prior to the roadway reopening, said PennDOT spokesman Steve Cowan.
The Ohio River at Downtown Pittsburgh crested at more than 28 feet Thursday morning, exceeding original forecasts as heavy rain left parts of the Golden Triangle, the North Shore and pockets all around Western Pennsylvania under water.
It was the worst flooding the region has seen in nearly 20 years, leaving landslides, road closures, traffic jams and heavy cleanup in the aftermath.
At the 10th Street Bypass, the flooding that engulfed that section on Thursday was gone by Friday afternoon, but it remained closed to traffic.
Just hours before the home opener when the Pirates faced off against the Baltimore Orioles, the river walk along the Allegheny River outside of PNC Park and Pittsburgh’s River Rescue station remained underwater.
Although flooding submerged sections of the Three River Heritage Trail this week, the trails are expected to be cleaned up quickly after the rivers recede, said Kelsey Ripper, executive director of the Friends of the Riverfront.
The nonprofit manages 33 miles of the urban riverfront trail system along Pittsburgh’s three rivers and Allegheny County.
“The trails were designed to be flooded,” Ms. Ripper said. “We expect this to happen every year.”
As of Friday, the water receded from some trails along the river, Ms. Ripper said.
Additional sections remaining underwater from flooding included the new Mon Wharf connector, along River Avenue between Millvale and the North Shore, and the Southside Riverfront Park.
The city of Pittsburgh’s Public Works will use flusher trucks to power wash the mud off the paved trails, she said. “There’s a lot of cleanup that has to be done. We ask for people’s patience.”
Ripper advised trail users to follow signage and abide by the city barricades on some trail sections.
The Friends will post updates on trail section re-openings via its website and social media.
If trail users find problem areas, Ms. Ripper encourages them to report issues by calling 311 or using the MyBurgh app.
A group of fans tailgating in a parking lot near PNC Park said the road closures did not negatively impact their travel plans, but the outdoor parking lots near the stadium that did not open until 12:15 p.m. presented a much bigger issue — they had to circle the area until they could get into an open lot.
The Mon Wharf parking garage, which normally serves as a place for Pirates fans to park, was still completely flooded as of Friday morning. The garage is tentatively closed until Wednesday due cleanup from the damage.
The walkway below the fountain at Point State Park, where visitors can normally walk the entire circumference of the fountain, was nearly indistinguishable from the rivers that surround it on Friday morning. The bright gray concrete was covered in a thick layer of brown mud, resembling the river bed and blending seamlessly into the brown waters of the Allegheny and Mon rivers just feet away.
The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources canceled next week’s celebration of the completion of the $4.2 million Mon Wharf Connector trail section at Point State Park.
“Park staff are focusing on recovery at the park to ensure Point State Park remains a top destination in the city despite the effects of the flooding,” said DCNR press secretary Wesley Robinson in a release.
There was some damage on the new connector trail that will take about a week to cleanup, Mr. Robinson said via email.
About 13 miles downriver, clean up was just starting at the Dashields Lock and Dam where the Ohio had completely run over the lock walls and crept within feet of the operation’s office building along the riverbank in Moon.
It was the most significant flooding — or “high water event” in industry parlance — since 2005, said Alan Nogy, the locks and dams branch chief for the Pittsburgh district of the Army Corps of Engineers.
Mr. Nogy said the lock became inoperable around noon on Wednesday, and the river crested at just under 27 feet on Thursday. The water had only just receded enough for clean-up to begin Friday morning.
The high waters left mud and dirt caked along the walls and gates of the lock as well as the walkways around it, and debris was piled up against the gates and left behind on railings and walkways.
“The first and foremost thing we have to do is make sure the facility is safe for our employees to even start the cleanup process,” Mr. Nogy said.
That means hosing off the mud on the walkways so they can get close enough to the rest of the mud and debris to begin clearing that away.
“They get the work area safe first and then they just continue with the mud clean-up,” he said. “You have to expose all the equipment, you have to open up electrical boxes and see if water got inside of them — it’s an extensive process.”
It’s made more extensive when the water overruns the walls, like it did at Dashields. Montgomery Locks and Dam, the next lock down the river near Monaca in Beaver County, was out of service during the flooding but, unlike Dashields, the water never overran the walls. That meant crews at that facility had their lock chamber operational by Friday morning.
“Whereas these guys — not that far away up the river — they’re still going to be working probably all day today and maybe into tomorrow before they can get close to that point,” Mr. Nogy said. “It just depends on where the water got to, what the facility looks like and what they have to go through.”
Further downriver in Hannibal, W. Va., the Ohio River had only just crested early Friday morning. That meant the real cleanup there couldn’t begin until the water receded to a safe level.
“So while these guys are a little further along in the process and some of the Allegheny locks and the Mon locks are a little further along, Hannibal hasn’t even begun to start their process,” he said.
Thursday’s Ohio River crest is the highest the river has reached since January 2005, but remains below the 31-foot mark from September 2004, when the remnants of Hurricane Ivan ripped through the region. Prior to that, the highest crest was in January 1996, when heavy rain and runoff from snow in the mountains flooded the entire Upper Ohio River Basin.
After a landslide closed a busy section of the 21-mile-long Butler Freeport Community Trail in Butler and Armstrong counties earlier this week, work crews cleaned the slide between Freeport and Monroe Road in Buffalo Township as of Friday.
That section of trail will re-open this weekend, said Chris Ziegler, president of the trail council.
The slide was about 40-by-four feet.
Ms. Ziegler, who is also executive director of Armstrong Trails, celebrated the opening of the new 10-mile section from Schenley in Gilpin Township to Crooked Creek in Bethel, both in Armstrong County, on Monday.
When heavy rains hit the following day, there was very little damage to the new trail section, she said.
“If we wouldn’t have cleaned out the ditches and culvert pipes in the new section, the crushed limestone trail surface would have been wiped out,” she said.
The Armstrong trail, like other recreational trails, is built on old railroad beds along rivers where drainage is incorporated in the trail design.
“We got lucky because we didn’t have wind and uprooted trees would have caused more damage,” Ms. Ziegler said.
First Published: April 5, 2024, 2:57 p.m.
Updated: April 6, 2024, 2:32 p.m.
