Cement mixers, bulldozers and elected officials in hard hats and neon vests mingled on Friday at a construction site in Pittsburgh's Highland Park, where a new pump station is taking shape.
It’s one of the first projects underway of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority’s Water Reliability Plan — a $500 million renewal of the city’s water pumping and distribution system that’s more than 100 years old.
“It is immense and it is needed. And you could argue long overdue,” said Will Pickering, chief executive officer at the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority. “We need to modernize the system and also add elements, which is key to the project. We're here today to add resiliency and redundancy. When infrastructure inevitably fails, things like more modern pumping, being able to pump partly in different pressure areas within the city without interruption is really key, and you don't have those things. You can lose water pressure that creates water quality concerns and you have things like boil water advisories.”
So far, PWSA replaced the liner and cover to the reservoir in the middle of Highland Park and put in new large transmission pipes that carry water from the pump station to the reservoir. After the new Highland Park Reservoir Pump Station wraps up in spring 2026, they plan to build two other new pump stations — one to replace the Bruecken Pump Station next to the Allegheny River and Washington Boulevard, and major renovations at the station at the water treatment plant in Pittsburgh near Aspinwall.
These upgrades will allow the drinking water to keep flowing while PWSA replaces the heart of the water treatment system — a 44-million gallon tank of water called a “clearwell” at the PWSA’s water treatment plant. The clearwell is where the water is disinfected with chlorine before it’s sent out to homes across the city to drink. It’s almost 100 years old and there isn’t a way to make repairs while it’s still in operation without jeopardizing Pittsburgh’s drinking water. The whole project is expected to be completed by 2034.
PWSA treats all drinking water at the main water treatment plant. From there it flows to a couple of pump stations, like the Bruecken Pump Station. From there, the water flows through new big blue pipes, or supply mains, up to the reservoirs in Highland Park.
“The purpose of this pump station is to take that treated water from that reservoir and be able to push it out into the system,” said Frank Sidari, chief environmental compliance and ethics officer at PWSA. Then, the drinking water will flow through the web of underground pipes to the taps of the center part of the city of Pittsburgh over to the South Hills.
The project has been funded by hundreds of millions of dollars in low-interest loans from the state and federal government, through state programs like PENNVEST, designed to help finance infrastructure improvement projects in Pennsylvania. They also plan to take advantage of funding from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, hoping to save “hundreds of millions of dollars” to fund the project compared to taking out municipal bonds, which is how these projects have been funded in the past, according to Pickering.
But Pittsburghers’ water bills won’t be spared. PWSA’s rates have been rising for years. The average water bill in the city of Pittsburgh is about $100 a month, according to PWSA. Pickering said that will continue, but they hope to expand their discount programs for low-income households, at the same time.
“There will need to be additional rate increases to fund this kind of investment,” Pickering said. “We want to make sure it's spread out over time because it's been a hundred years since we've done a lot of this work.”
The Highland Park Reservoir Pump Station is set to be finished in spring 2026.
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