Most people don't have any sense of how vulnerable the region's water systems are until they live through a water main break.
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Diane Grogan peers into her missing front yard at 1194 New Hampshire Drive, near Marshall Avenue in Brighton Heights, after it was washed away during a water line break in May. (Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette) |
And lately, many local families have had that depressing experience.
About 3 p.m. on Memorial Day, Diane Grogan, 48, heard a popping noise outside her New Hampshire Avenue duplex in Brighton Heights. When she looked outside, she saw 2 feet of water bubbling up where her front lawn had been. Because of the holiday, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority had only one emergency crew working and the call came in right at its shift change.
By the time workers responded, a stream had washed away her lawn and had taken out part of a backyard neighbor's retaining wall. Her duplex neighbor, George Nowack, said he and his sister lost a washer, dryer and water heater, as well as power tools and other items. "The water was gushing and flowing everywhere. It's all destroyed." A crew came by the next morning to clean up the mess and reseed Grogan's lawn.
Another kind of problem popped to the surface shortly after midnight on June 7, when a 30-inch main burst on South Negley Avenue near Ellsworth Avenue in Shadyside. The leak was contained by 2 a.m., but crews responding discovered they did not have a coupling necessary to make the repair.
Anupama Mahajan and her husband, Mohan Ramkumar, were in the Dover Gables apartment next to the break. They didn't lose their water service, as they had when another break occurred about six months earlier, but she said the water did become turgid. It's one of the reasons they've decided to move, she said.
"We have a baby and, frankly, I don't find it safe."
Actually, our water is remarkably safe.
Most of our drinking water originates from rivers, which means it's vulnerable to parasites such as giardia and cryptosporidium from feces, yet not many people are stricken. The Allegheny County Health Department averages 80-140 reports each year of giardiasis -- which causes stomach pain and diarrhea but is treatable -- and fewer than 10 reports of the more serious cryptosporidiosis, according to spokesman Guillermo Cole.
Cryptosporidium, for which there is no effective treatment, was responsible for a 1993 outbreak in Milwaukee that killed 104 people and sickened 400,000.
Allegheny County's last major incidence of water-borne illness occurred in McKeesport in February 1984, when a giardiasis outbreak afflicted 300 people but caused no deaths. The problem was traced to the city's poorly-maintained treatment plant, which has since been replaced and is now part of the Westmoreland County Water Authority.
"We tend to take water for granted in this country," said Tom Curtis, of the American Water Works Association in Denver. "
You can go anywhere in America and drink water right out of the tap with enormous confidence that you won't get sick. You can't assume that in many other places in the world."
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