Pittsburgh’s rivers, water full of toxins

Thousands of fish traverse the three rivers of Pittsburgh. As they move from the Monongahela… Thousands of fish traverse the three rivers of Pittsburgh. As they move from the Monongahela and the Allegheny past the Point into the Ohio River, they swim through impure waters.

Conrad Daniel Volz, a researcher at Pitt’s Department of Environmental and Occupational Health, sees evidence of water problems in the fish that he studies.

Working with channel catfish and white bass caught in Pittsburgh near the Braddock Dam, the Highland Park Dam, Point State Park and in Kittanning, Volz sees the effects of run-off from industries and households alike in the waters of the three rivers.

Mercury, which seeps into the rivers from nearby power plants and sticks to sediment deposits from Pennsylvania’s former steel mills and mines, is three to six times higher in fish caught from the Allegheny River near Kittanning than fish 44 miles away in Pittsburgh. It is a toxin that, if ingested, can cause neurological problems, mental disorders and developmental problems, especially in children.

Volz, who published his work in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, shows that the flesh of the fish he studied from Armstrong County contains 25 percent more mercury than the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency allows for consumption.

Also, estrogens in the water, which come from cosmetics like shampoo and everyday cleaning products dumped down drains, bio-accumulate in the fish and cause an overabundance of female fish.

“Whatever you throw down your drain or into your toilet, that goes into the rivers. These finishing plants can’t take this all out,” Volz said. “[Fixing this] is a moral imperative for the region.”

And that’s where Pitt comes in.

In Pittsburgh, where boating, fishing and swimming are popular recreational activities on the cities’ three rivers, good quality water equals good quality of life, according to Tyler Gourley. Gourley is the project manager of the Regional Water Management Task Force who will address water and sewage concerns in Southwestern Pennsylvania this summer.

Pitt’s Institute of Politics determined the importance of studying water management in the area and launched the Task Force in May 2006. The group, independent of Pitt, plans to study water problems and engage the public.

“We have come a long way in 10 years, our water quality has gotten better,” Gourley said. “But we still have one of the worst water quality problems in the U.S.

“There’s not radioactive waste floating downstream, but there is a pressing public health problem.”

The most pressing water management problems come in the form of sewage backups, flooding and storm water runoff.

For every one-10th inch of rain that falls in Southwestern Pennsylvania, billions of gallons of sewage dump into rivers and streams.

The EPA permits the opening of sewage systems into rivers and streams two times a year, yet Southwestern Pennsylvania water systems disperse their sewage into the environment between 80 and 90 times every year.

Sanitary sewage systems, which are pipe systems that keep storm water and sewage waste separate, back up into basements across the region.

The Task Force estimated that $8 billion, not including the cost of system deterioration over the next 10 years, would barely suffice to fix the present sewage spill problems.

“The dirtier the water is, if there is a failure, that means disaster,” Gourley said.

Fourteen years ago, a sewage treatment plant in Milwaukee failed, polluting drinking water with raw sewage. Four hundred thousand citizens became sick, and more than 100 people died.

In June of 2000, the EPA determined that water in Butler County was unsafe to drink. However, Gregory F. Tutsock, the executive director of the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and a technical adviser on the Task Force, assures that Pittsburgh city water is safe to drink.

Gourley said that the real problem lies in the lack of coordination of more than 1,000 government entities currently managing the situation across the region.

Municipalities, watershed groups like the Mountain Watershed Association, county governments, conservationists and the EPA currently have no way to come together and share information. Two-hundred sixty water and sewer authorities and 600 municipalities currently work across the region.

“There are a lot of hands in the pie,” Gourley said. “We need to figure out the best system to bring cohesion to the region.”

The Task Force plans on helping local governments move forward to attack the problems.

“Something like this has never been done before,” Terry Miller, the director of the Institute of Politics, said. The Task Force is the largest undertaking the institute and the water industry in Southwestern Pennsylvania has ever seen.

With 14 public forums scheduled in all 11 counties concerned, the Task Force hopes to educate citizens on pressing water issues and gain input on how to resolve them.

Gourley hopes to see decisions for water management made by this summer or fall. “It’s designed to be aggressive and fast-paced,” he said.

The task force’s first public forum will be held next Wednesday at 7 p.m. at Waynesburg College. The task force stops in Pittsburgh for a public input meeting at the Regional Enterprise Tower on Sixth Avenue May 17 at 2 p.m.