Why almost 67% of Allegheny County's streams are ranked as 'impaired'

Most Allegheny County residents likely are unaware of a narrow stream with rust-colored water that meanders beneath roadways and private property in Mon Valley communities, including Elizabeth Borough and Forward Township.

Ultimately making its way to the Monongahela River, Fallen Timber Run is one of many polluted streams in the county — accounting for a whopping 67% of streams, 915 miles in total — designated as “impaired.” That percentage is high when compared to the state’s overall 37%, according to a draft water quality report from the state Department of Environmental Protection.

Across centuries, these streams have largely become impaired — meaning their waters don’t meet state standards for drinking, fishing or swimming. The region’s history of mining is a substantial contributor, and improvements to prevent sewage from entering waterways are ongoing, but the process is costly and slow.

“We live in a place with so much history, as one of the main sites of the industrial revolution,” said Heather Manzo, executive director of the Allegheny County Conservation District. “There have been generations of resource extraction in Pennsylvania and Allegheny County, and each causes a different kind of pollution that impacts water quality.”

It’s a complex stew, from mills and plants to decades of development and redevelopment.

“Heavy metal toxins reside in our soils. The whole game we play is how to keep the soil in place,” Manzo said. Pollutants can travel far, from local streams to the Gulf of Mexico, she added.

In Allegheny County, the leading causes of stream impairment are acid mine drainage from abandoned mines, impacting 600 stream miles; unknown sources (460 miles); urban runoff and storm sewer discharge (332 miles); and highway, road and bridge runoff (150 miles), according to the conservation district.

Celebrating its 80th anniversary this year, the conservation district knows the history and challenges well.

“What is tricky about water pollution is it comes from so many places. There are small, scattered sources rather than one point source. It’s complex,” Ms. Manzo said.

Water quality can be impacted by something as relatively small as oil leaking from cars in a parking lot. Stopping toxins and sediment from entering waterways helps ecosystems and can reduce water treatment expenses by 20%-40%, according to Manzo.

“It’s bigger than, ‘We just care about the environment.’ It hits people’s pocketbooks."

The fix has been a slow drip of state environmental funding, such as its Growing Greener program, which recently awarded more than $4.5 million to southwestern Pennsylvania.

The Allegheny Conservation District received $176,417 for water quality improvement projects in the Mon River valley communities, including the Fallen Timber Run watershed.

Statewide, the program is funneling $17.3 million to 89 projects.

Invisible streams

Fallen Timber Run is plagued by bacteria, excess organic matter and acid mine drainage. During storms, pollution and sediment wash into the waterway from roads, neighborhoods and former industrial sites, according to the conservation district.

Adding to the list are past efforts to fix problems that have actually caused problems, including straightening streams via concrete-lined gullies that quicken the flow, leading to flooding and erosion.

“Think of the luge in the Olympics,” Ms. Manzo said.

And Fallen Timber Run flows into the Mon River, which is a drinking water source for about a million residents.

Mining in the area dates to the 1870s and lasted until the mid-20th century.

The Mon Valley is underlain by the Pittsburgh Coal seam, the thickest and most substantial coal bed in the Appalachian Basin, first tapped centuries ago by soldiers at Fort Pitt.

“Acid mine drainage typically happens on private property, and municipalities are not well equipped nor have the resources to address” the problem, said An Lewis, executive director of the Homestead-based Steel Rivers Council of Governments, which is made up of 19 municipalities, according to its website.

“It’s a classic post-industrial place with post-industrial river towns. It's not that water quality is not important: It is one of many important issues they have to deal with,” she said.

Communities can address runoff from roads and storm sewer overflows, but other pollution is not so easy.

“My sense is there’s probably not a lot of awareness in those communities about the water quality,” Lewis said.

Her council will work with the conservation district for its technical expertise on specifics of the pollution and remedies as part of the Growing Greener grant and other opportunities, she said.

In the Mon Valley, outdoors people such as hunters and anglers are more in tune with their waterways, but that’s not the case with the general public, said Lisa Brown, executive director of the Watersheds of South Pittsburgh, a Hazelwood nonprofit promoting environmental quality in the Saw Mill Run and Streets Run watersheds.

“The urbanites, the only time they think about the streams is when they get flooded,” she said.

New greenways and polluted streams haven't been top of mind for residents as development and environmental degradation historically nixed places for outdoor recreation. Generations of mill workers were also busy.

“The folks who worked in mills worked hard and were tired. They didn’t have a lot of energy for leisure time,” Brown said.

Brown’s watershed group wants to restore green space along Streets Run and Saw Mill Run.

Future prospects

“The stuff entering our streams today, and our landscape practices, is an area where we have the power to change the way we do things. It would drastically improve waterways now and in the future,” said Heather Hulton VanTassel, executive director of Three Rivers Waterkeeper.

One improvement her group seeks is slowing stream flow so treatment systems aren't inundated during rainy periods. That would entail installing gravel parking lots instead of paved ones and switching concrete ditches to bioswales, or vegetated ditches.

“You want the ground to absorb water through natural filtration, instead of picking up chemicals and sediment into our streams,” VanTassel said.

She would like to see more residents become connected to the water and become stewards for restoration. There now is more recreational bustle around the rivers than in the past, with trails, kayak launches and the build-out of the North Shore. And VanTassel said she expects waterside recreation to grow.

Manzo is heartened by the future of water quality in the region and the state.

“The right to clean water is embedded in our state constitution and that means there will be resources for local efforts. We have been at the nexus of that and will continue to do that for another 80 years,” she said.

The Conservation District’s upcoming efforts include flood modeling on a small scale to help local communities identify sections of streams with erosion and pollution problems as “hot zones” during rainfall, Ms. Manzo said.

“That’s an angle we can work on with the community and a municipal partner: Here are the hot zones and here is the cost.”

Additionally, Pennsylvania is among 15 states potentially benefiting from the Ohio River Restoration Program Act to improve water quality, in legislation introduced last month by U.S. Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., and Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind.

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