Not all of Allegheny County's streams live up to the name.
Twenty-three of them flow inside sewer pipes, and some have been buried out of sight for so long that no one knows what they were once called.
Community activists and a study by 3 Rivers-2nd Nature hope part of the sewer refurbishment work in the region will involve "daylighting" about half of these streams and creeks. Daylighting would once again allow the sun to dapple their surfaces, and fish and other life to thrive between their banks.
The 2nd Nature study said 12 of the streams have been identified as good candidates to be uncovered and returned to a natural surface flow. That would benefit the community by improving water quality, controlling floods, increasing green space and providing corridors for wildlife.
Many of the streams haven't seen the light of day for 100 years or more, victims of decisions in the late 1800s to build combined sewers that carry both storm water and human waste rather than separate storm and sanitary sewers.
Others were buried by industrial or housing projects that created flat land for development by cutting off hillsides and filling in valleys.
The buried streams, flowing through sewer pipes and culverts, add almost 2 million gallons a day to the 190 million gallon-per-day dry weather flow into Alcosan's North Side treatment plant, and can add triple that volume during storms.
Not every stream should be uncovered, but the study, funded by The Heinz Endowments, said one of the first projects could be in Sheraden Park near Langley High School.
Restoring that long-buried stream, which would flow into Chartiers Creek, would create a potentially large wetlands that would provide a habitat for Chartiers Creek fish and aquatic life.
Nine Mile Run, flowing through Squirrel Hill's Frick Park and into the Monongahela River at Duck Hollow, hasn't been in a pipe, but the city of Pittsburgh's only uncovered, free-flowing stream for the last 90 years has been fed mainly by overflowing sewer lines, and has periodically disappeared into broken sewer mains.
A joint $7.7 million project now under way by the city and the Army Corps of Engineers will relocate and repair sewer lines, restore the natural features of the stream and improve the wildlife habitat and green space around it.
The work also will add 100 acres to Frick Park, linking it to the Mon River, and restore more than a mile of stream with riffles and pools, small waterfalls and wetlands, from Braddock Avenue in Swissvale to the river.
"It's an important kind of project," said John Schombert, executive director of 3 Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Project, which is overseeing efforts to upgrade sewer systems in the Alcosan area. "It will create a warm water fishery ... in an urban setting. People ought to be able to get something back, more than sewers, from spending all this money."
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