ALCOSAN’s Wet Weather Plan is looking gray; does that leave room for green?

In 2012, PennFuture submitted comments encouraging the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) to look for ways to green their Wet Weather Plan. The Plan is required by law, to outline a strategy to keep raw sewage out of our waterways.* The end goal is important. Our rivers provide our drinking water as well as places to fish, swim, boat and unwind. If our rivers aren't clean and healthy, we in Allegheny County lose out.

Stormwater Bumpout
Image credit:
Philadelphia Water Department

Reaching the Goal 
How we reach the end goal has been the subject of a very public conversation over the past year. While ALCOSAN proposed gray infrastructure (pipes and tanks) to store more water, many groups, including PennFuture, are asking for green. Green infrastructure means capturing rain where it lands, before it enters the pipe system and, ideally, allowing it to soak into the ground or be taken up by plant roots. Unlike gray infrastructure, green doesn't just manage stormwater. Green infrastructure provides secondary benefits including limiting surface water erosion; creating habitat and passive recreational areas; shading urban spaces and reducing cooling costs (hard to appreciate in February but important nonetheless); offsetting climate change; cleaning our polluted air; and increasing property values.

If green is so great, why isn't it in the Wet Weather Plan?  
Good question. The features that make green infrastructure great, including that it is on the surface, beautifying our neighborhoods while cleaning our water, are also what make it challenging to plan for. Green infrastructure must be integrated into 83 municipalities. Over the past year, understanding of the value of green infrastructure has increased dramatically throughout the county and the demand is now loud and clear, with leaders including Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto and Allegheny County Executive Rich Fitzgerald leading the way.

Let’s go green now
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently told ALCOSAN that the Wet Weather Plan won’t meet required water quality standards. With a new administration in Pittsburgh, the news may be a step forward rather than a setback. By asking ALCOSAN to revisit the plan, the EPA has left the door open for green infrastructure. Let’s take this opportunity to invest in clean water AND thriving communities by incorporating green infrastructure along with the gray.

*How does raw sewage wind up in the water, you ask? 
As we build our homes, schools, offices roads and parking lots, we cover up soil and replace it with hard, impermeable surfaces. When it rains (or snows) all the water that hits those hard surfaces is sent straight into pipes instead of soaking into the ground. Once the pipes fill up, they are designed to overflow (so they don’t back up into your basement), and overflows dump not only rain and snow melt into our rivers but the sewage that flows in there, too. Gross, I know!

Valessa Souter-Kline is PennFuture's Western Pennsylvania Outreach Coordinator and is based in our Pittsburgh office.