The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority on Thursday kicked off the first in a series of six community meetings on its proposed stormwater management plan.
Speaking with residents in the West End, PWSA’s Tony Igwe said the meeting was an opportunity for residents to have a say in the kinds of projects to be funded by the monthly stormwater management fee they pay.
Many of the dozen or so participants raised questions about the fee, which first appeared on customers’ bills in January of last year. The fee is based on the amount of “impermeable” land on one’s property, and not the overall size of the property.
The more “hard surfaces” on a parcel, the more rainwater the city and PWSA will have to manage.
Michelle Gibbs said because she lives on a hill, there isn’t much flooding in her neighborhood.
“It’s like, ‘Okay, why am I paying this, exactly? I don’t have this issue,’” Gibbs said. “But I understand the plan [needs] to be funded."
"So, somebody has to pay it.”
PWSA’s “multiyear phase-in of stormwater rate increases” will allow the agency to more fully address up to 60 areas in the city that continue to face flooding, even when there is only moderately heavy rainfall.
“Other cities around the country, if you have a combined sewer system that carries both rainwater and sewage from your house, typically those handle about two-and-a-half to three inches of rain over a 24-hour period,” Igwe said. “Right now in Pittsburgh, you'd be lucky to have [our sewers handle] an inch and a half.”
The current stormwater fee amasses roughly $23 million per year for upkeep and mitigation projects. But Igwe said that won’t come close to covering the cost of revamping the city’s infrastructure to the point it would be able to meet the needs of an increasingly wet, changing climate.
PWSA’s plan comes as part of an effort to bring the agency, along with all 82 municipalities that are part of the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority’s sewage treatment system, into compliance with federal regulations that prohibit combined sewer overflows. ALCOSAN is under a consent decree from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to reduce the region’s excessive sewer overflows, which violate the Clean Water Act.
Overwhelming volumes of stormwater send at least 9 billion gallons of untreated sewage into the region’s rivers each year.
PWSA in December released a final draft of its plan to address the problem. Among its goals are creating a framework to better explain its stormwater fee to customers, instituting a task force to develop coordinated plans to manage stormwater citywide and defining initial ways the agency can invest in stormwater management.
Igwe said while the agency is working on “low-hanging” projects to mitigate flooding now, addressing the system’s issues will take years.
“Think about it — a lot of the sewer systems in Pittsburgh, the very first ones, were built in the 1850s [through] 1890,” he added. “So it's taken us more than 100 years and change to get where we are today."
"It’s going to take us quite a bit to solve the problem that we put off all that time.”
PWSA is looking for residents’ input on which projects to prioritize, and how much they’re willing to pay in their water bills to support those projects. The agency divided its service area into 19 watersheds and ranked them based on factors like equity, localized flooding and water quality.
At the top of the list included in the proposal was the Negley Run watershed, which includes low-income neighborhoods like Larimer and Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar. Toward the bottom of the list is the Nine-Mile Run watershed that includes Squirrel Hill.
But Igwe said the rankings serve as a starting point that can be changed as more input is gathered.
“By no means is the prioritization in the plan right now the final prioritization,” Igwe said.
PWSA will hold five more feedback sessions across the city:
- Tuesday, April 18 at the Philips Recreation Center in Carrick
- Tuesday, April 25 at the Kingsley Association in the East End
- Tuesday, May 16 at the Brighton Heights Healthy Active Living Center on the Northside
- Tuesday, May 23 at the Hazelwood Healthy Active Living Center
- Tuesday, June 6 at the Elsie H. Hillman Auditorium in the Hill District
Comments on the plan can also be submitted online through June 30.
