Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania (2005) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
Pages 20-54
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 20... ...
20 2 Regional Water Resources: Physiographical, Historical, and Social Dimensions As background to understanding the complex water quality problems of southwestern Pennsylvania, this chapter summarizes the region's physical geography; its economic, demographic, and land use trends; and the history of its water supply and wastewater treatment practices. Since the 1970s, the Pittsburgh region has evolved from reliance on heavy industry to an economy based largely on technology, medical research, and higher education.
|
From page 21... ...
Regional Water Resources 21 FIGURE 2-1 Ohio River basin showing locks and dams along the Ohio River; boxed area includes the Allegheny and Monongahela River basins and the headwaters of the Ohio River in Pennsylvania. SOURCE: Adapted from ORSANCO; available on-line at http://www.orsanco.
|
From page 22... ...
22 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania FIGURE 2-2 The Allegheny and Monongahela watershed.
|
From page 23... ...
Regional Water Resources 23 FIGURE 2-3 Topography of the Pittsburgh region. SOURCE: Anderson et al., 2000.
|
From page 24... ...
24 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania As the earliest glacier moved into northwestern Pennsylvania about 770,000 years ago, the south-flowing ice blocked the northwest-flowing streams and caused lakes to form along the leading edge of the glacier. Eventually, the lakes became so deep that the water flowed over the divides (hilltops and ridges separating streams)
|
From page 25... ...
Regional Water Resources 25 Regional Biodiversity The headwaters of the Ohio River in Pennsylvania are home to approximately 300 species of birds, 55 species of mammals, 35 species of reptiles, and 35 species of amphibians (WPC, 2004)
|
From page 26... ...
26 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania fell by 35.7 percent from about 520,000 to about 335,000 (see Table 2-1)
|
From page 27... ...
Regional Water Resources 27 Despite its metropolitan population decline, the Pittsburgh MSA has been sprawling further onto rural land. According to a Brookings Institution study of urban sprawl from 1982 to 1997, the Pittsburgh MSA lost 8 percent in population but grew by 42.6 percent in urbanized area during that time (Fulton et al., 2001)
|
From page 28... ...
28 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania TABLE 2-3 2000 Population Change in the Pittsburgh Region, By County County 2000 Population Change from 1990 % Allegheny 1,281,666 4.1 Armstrong 72,392 1.5 Beaver 181,412 2.5 Butler 174,083 14.5 Fayette 148,644 2.3 Greene 40,672 2.8 Indiana 89,605 0.4 Lawrence 94,643 1.6 Somerset 80,023 2.3 Washington 202,897 0.8 Westmoreland 369,993 0.1 Pennsylvania 12,281,054 3.4 United States 281,241,906 13.2 SOURCE: Adapted from U.S. Census Bureau and Pennsylvania State University's Cooperative Extension as cited in Pennsylvania State University's Center for Economic and Community Development Pennsylvania Census 2000, available on-line at http://cecd.aers.psu.edu/census2000/PAcountypop.PDF.
|
From page 29... ...
Regional Water Resources 29 TABLE 2-5 Median Income, Median Value of Owner-Occupied Housing, and Poverty Rate for the Pittsburgh Region County Median Household Income (2000) Median Value of Owner Occupied Housing (2000)
|
From page 30... ...
30 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania As population declines in the central city and inner MSA counties, there is likely to be surplus water and sewer capacity in many of those communities, along with roads, schools, parks, and other infrastructure in place. Much of this infrastructure is old and in need of maintenance and upgrading which has led to sewer "tap-in" restrictions in a number of communities in the Pittsburgh region communities (described later)
|
From page 31... ...
Regional Water Resources 31 Among several factors that influence the rate of urban sprawl, Katz also listed infrastructure: How do we spend the billions of dollars of state money on roads, on water, on sewer, on school facilities, on government facilities, on higher educational institutions? Do we spend this to reinforce, to support areas that we've already invested in -- cities, older suburbs, townships -- or do we continue to basically use them to facilitate more sprawl?
|
From page 32... ...
32 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania concept of a "regional water forum" representing all sectors of stakeholders is recommended for consideration by southwestern Pennsylvania area leaders and citizens. ECOLOGICAL RESTORATION IN THE REGION Despite its economic and demographic challenges, key stakeholders in the Pittsburgh region are striving to improve the ecological condition and public enjoyment of its Three Rivers and their many local tributary watersheds.
|
From page 33... ...
Regional Water Resources 33 2. construct a water carriage system and build it following a combined rather than a separate sewer design; 3.
|
From page 34... ...
34 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania BOX 2-1 SUMMARY OF COMMUNITY-BASED STREAM RESTORATION PROJECTS Nine Mile Run Nine Mile Run is a stream whose watershed drains five Pittsburgh area municipalities, flowing through wooded Frick Park and an urban brownfield before it joins the Monongahela River. The brownfield features a mountain of steel mill slag (15-20 stories high)
|
From page 35... ...
Regional Water Resources 35 restoration techniques included "stream daylighting," the act of unburying, and renaturalizing or restoring a stream and its channel that flowed through Pittsburgh's Frick Park. The project team also developed concept plans for the redesign and reconstruction of the main stream channel to address a century of erosion caused by stormwater from nearby sewers and roads.
|
From page 36... ...
36 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania industrial wastes (the technology advocated by the famous sanitarian George E Waring, Jr.)
|
From page 37... ...
Regional Water Resources 37 and water quality. The commission's report, issued early in 1894 and based on chemical, bacteriological, and statistical methods, found Pittsburgh water supply "not only not up to a proper standard of potable water but .
|
From page 38... ...
38 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania public health of communities that drew their water supplies from rivers downstream from Pittsburgh (Gregory, 1974; Tarr, 1996a)
|
From page 39... ...
Regional Water Resources 39 pollution existed but could be controlled; and (3) streams that were so polluted they could not be used as public water supplies or for fishing and recreational purposes without treatment and, therefore, could continue to be used for the discharge of untreated wastes.
|
From page 40... ...
40 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania questions as to whether sanitary policy should be determined by each municipality or by a regional agency, how sewage treatment should be financed, whether a central treatment facility or multiple disposal plants would be most efficient, and what form of treatment technology made the most sense given the existing system of sewage collection and drainage and local conditions of population density and topography (Yosie, 1981)
|
From page 41... ...
Regional Water Resources 41 negotiations brought about agreements between the city and ALCOSAN, the essence of which was to enlarge the number of communities permitted into the service district and to increase city control over the board (Yosie, 1981)
|
From page 42... ...
42 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania BOX 2-2 PENN HILLS: A CASE OF WASTEWATER MISMANAGEMENT1 The Borough of Penn Hills is a suburban community located directly east of the City of Pittsburgh on roughly 19 square miles of hilly land (see Figure 1-1)
|
From page 43... ...
Regional Water Resources 43 prohibition of any new tap-ins, slowing development in the borough. All the Penn Hills wastewater treatment plants utilized secondary treatment with activated sludge as the secondary process.
|
From page 44... ...
44 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania Water Supply and Wastewater Disposal Practices in Rural Southwestern Pennsylvania Sanitary conditions in rural southwestern Pennsylvania and rural areas throughout the nation were generally considered primitive before the post-World War II period. As late as 1943, a text Municipal and Rural Sanitation noted that "At the present time, and in all probability for many years to come, excreta will be disposed of without water carriage at the vast majority of farmhouses, at residences in the smaller towns and villages .
|
From page 45... ...
Regional Water Resources 45 medical director for each county, providing public health nurses, school medical inspectors, and sanitary inspectors (Smillie, 1939)
|
From page 46... ...
46 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania problems. That report states that some low-income rural areas may require up to 90 percent grants to afford sewerage projects using conventional methods.
|
From page 47... ...
Regional Water Resources 47 Pennsylvania inhibited coercive action. Indeed, the coal industry argued emphatically that no "suitable" method existed for the treatment of acid mine water.
|
From page 48... ...
48 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania (Casner, 2004)
|
From page 49... ...
Regional Water Resources 49 The magnitude of the abandoned mine land problem dictated that much of the historic funding was devoted to priorities 1 and 2, while significant efforts to use the fund to remediate water (AMD) issues only began around 1995.
|
From page 50... ...
50 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania major tributaries to the Monongahela and Ohio Rivers. If all of this mine water were untreated however, it would be sufficient to add substantial metal loadings and acidity to already impaired tributaries with possible localized, severe effects on the Monongahela River.
|
From page 51... ...
Regional Water Resources 51 deteriorating septic systems and sewer pipes that are a major source of sewage contamination to groundwater supplies. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that southwestern Pennsylvania is dominated by poor shallow soils, a high water table, and sloped terrain, making the region one of the most challenging in the country for use of on-site sewage treatment and disposal systems such as septic tanks and leach fields.
|
From page 52... ...
52 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania ELI (Environmental Law Institute)
|
From page 53... ...
Regional Water Resources 53 McElwaine, A
|
From page 54... ...
54 Regional Cooperation for Water Quality Improvement in Southwestern Pennsylvania Tarr, J
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.