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Corps of Engineers is second agency to deny permit for Deer Creek project
Saturday, October 14, 2000 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has become the second agency to deny a permit for the controversial $169 million Deer Creek Crossing commercial development proposed for environmentally sensitive land in Harmar.
The Corps' announcement yesterday that it is suspending consideration of the wetlands permit requested by the ORIX-Woodmont development consortium comes on the heels of the state Department of Environmental Protection's decision Thursday to deny a stream-obstruction permit.
Nevertheless, the denials were a rarity. The DEP southwest regional office in Pittsburgh has never before denied a permit and the Corps' Pittsburgh office has denied only four of the 69 it has considered since January 1999.
Both DEP and the Corps say that rather than deny permits, they prefer to work with applicants to make their proposals conform to environmental rules for wetland and stream encroachment.
The Corps' announcement on Deer Creek, after more than a year of review, was little more than a formality.
By refusing the permit "without prejudice," however, the Corps reserved its right to review the proposal if the developer overturns the DEP denial on appeal to the Environmental Hearing Board.
"The Corps has not reached the end of our own permit evaluation," said spokesman Richard Dowling, "but we will stop to await further developments, if any."
William Green, spokesman for the property owner, Pittsburgh businessman W. Duff McCrady, and for the Texas and Chicago firms that make up the development consortium, declined to say if his clients will appeal the denials.
The proposal for the 1.2 million-square-foot, retail-hotel-theater development on a 300-acre parcel of bottom land would have buried more than six acres of wetlands and 2,700 feet of Deer Creek under 8.5 million cubic yards of fill. It would have re-channeled the creek around the edge of the property, bounded by the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Route 28 and Route 910.
The development was criticized by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the state Fish and Boat Commission, and numerous environmental groups.
Revised proposals from the developer included some improvements in the relocated stream's configuration, additional constructed wetlands and a conservation corridor along a section of the creek upstream from the project.
But the developer made only superficial reductions in the project's acreage, despite being told by the DEP in July that the project would not be allowed to reroute the stream.
A subsequent creek sampling by the DEP and the state Fish and Boat Commission within the proposed development area found 19 different species of fish, including trout, bass and sauger.
The DEP denial said the applicant had not demonstrated that public benefits of the project -- a convenient shopping area, jobs, and increased tax benefits to schools and municipalities -- outweighed the harm to the environment and public natural resources.
The DEP southwest regional office in Pittsburgh reviews between 80 and 100 permit applications a year for proposed developments that would affect streams or wetlands and has never denied a permit before Deer Creek.
"No, this (permit denial) is not common," said Betsy Mallison, a DEP spokeswoman. "We regularly work with developers or applicants to come to some agreement about how they can meet our regulations protecting streams and wetlands and still put the project in."
DEP permit reviewers made several suggestions to the developer to downsize the project and reduce impacts on Deer Creek and valuable wetlands, she said.
"We gave this developer the opportunity to redesign the project," Mallison said, "but the changes were not significant enough to approve the permit."
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