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Study sees rivers of potential Amid hopes for riverfront revival, a study promises an eye-opening look at water quality, access Sunday, September 03, 2000 By Don Hopey, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
The morning rain has given way to hazy afternoon sunshine as we slowly troll in a converted bass boat along the west bank of the Monongahela River, 4 1/2 miles from the Point.
Reiko Goto, an artist with Carnegie Mellon University's STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, is at the boat's wheel. Landscape architect Suzy Meyer is charting riverbank conditions and access locations. Sue Thompson, a botanist, is sitting high in the bow on the kind of swiveling pedestal chair Roland Martin usually occupies on the Saturday morning television fishing shows when he's throwing out the latest crank-bait.
The women are half of Three Rivers -- Second Nature, a collaborative project funded by the Heinz Endowments that is assessing the vegetation along the riverbanks and the water quality of the rivers and their tributaries -- important components of much of the region's current redevelopment debate and activity, but about which little accurate information is known.
Thompson has a clipboard and pen in her hands while casting her eyes toward the riverbank. The interim executive director for the Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Partnership is methodically identifying and recording the variety of flora that to the unsquinting eye passes for generic greenery. She calls out the various plant species to her boating companions, along with some educated commentary.
"There's a mulberry, a common introduced species along the Mon. That's osage orange -- people call them monkey balls -- a native species. Wisteria, an escaped Asian ornamental that's taking over in some areas, is in there. That's a sycamore, willows, some box elder, tree of heaven, staghorn sumac, false indigo, elms, a dogwood, lots of poison ivy and joe-pye weed."
For most of the last century, the rivers flowing through Pittsburgh's urban landscape have been abused by industry, neglected by government and shunned by most residents. They were out of sight behind industrial facades and out of mind except when people had to cross them.
Now, with Pittsburgh coming to grips and in some cases embracing its post-industrial era, the rivers and the riparian areas that border them have been rediscovered.
Now the question is: what's there?
The idea behind Three Rivers -- Second Nature is to find out and report the information on an interactive computer data base that can be used by government agencies and communities trying to make decisions on multibillion-dollar sewer improvements, developers planning riverfront projects, citizen groups trying to re-establish natural areas and access points, and swimmers and boaters interested in identifying bacteriological hot spots.
Guided by a global positioning satellite monitor mounted next to Goto's steering wheel, we make one, two, three passes along the one-tenth-of-a-mile segment of riverbank.
They've been doing these segmented assessments since mid-June -- it takes four hours to do two miles of riverbank -- and hope to complete the approximately 50 miles of island and river shore line in the Pittsburgh pool this fall.
A partnership of the Three Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Project and the Carnegie Mellon University STUDIO for Creative Inquiry, the five-year project will then expand up the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers and down the Ohio River to the outer edges of Allegheny County.
"Pittsburgh's industrial heritage and what it did to these rivers lives on in the heads of many people, even if that's not the reality," Meyer said. "A lot of folks still think of the rivers as dirty sewers, but this study is going to be a real eye-opener. The riverbanks generally are in a lot better shape than we thought they would be. I think our findings are going to show the riverbanks to be much different from the perception."
In addition to assessing the biodiversity, slope and composition of the riverbanks and baseline information about water quality in the rivers and their major tributary creeks, the study will identify public use and access locations.
One of those places on the list of access potentials, a spit of coarse pebbles and mud near the mouth of the tiny Mon tributary Becks Run, has been dubbed "Banana Beach" by the three women.
It comes by its name not from any introduced tropical exotic growing along the riverbank, but because of the rightfully famous banana milkshakes at the nearby but not-so-easy-to-access-from-the-river Page Dairy Mart, a longtime soft-serve landmark at the southern end of the South Side Flats.
Since we're nearby, it's hot, and we're thirsty, Goto beaches the boat on the gravel bar. As a couple of large carp roll in the shallows, we scramble out of the boat and start up a steep and slippery path through head-high shoreline weeds. The path is narrow but well-established by fishermen and swimmers. At the top of the slope, we dart over active railroad tracks, slip around a commercial building and cross East Carson Street where it meets Becks Run Road to the corner ice cream stand.
After getting our shakes, we wait for a freight train to pass before crossing the tracks and making our way carefully back to the riverbank. Meyer notes that the path we just traveled is similar to many they've identified along the Mon and Allegheny rivers.
"As we've spent time on the rivers, we've noticed that there are a lot of people using the river in an informal way, and there could be more if access were better," Meyer said.
"The idea is to look for spots where natural beaches might be restored or areas where public access to the rivers can be improved."
The data they're collecting will be available to help planners, developers and the public identify opportunities for ecological restoration that would provide wildlife refuges and improved access.
"To identify what is possible, the community needs more ideas," said Goto, the project's creative director, as the skiff slips off the gravel bar and noses out into the river current. "If we can get and give enough information about what is out here to the community, we can all share visions of what the rivers ought to be."
Davitt Woodwell, director of Riverlife Task Force, a privately funded 40-member group overseeing development standards along the rivers, said the data developed by the project will be very useful.
"It's something that needs to go into the thinking as people look at development and try to work it into the design of their properties," Woodwell said. "It will dovetail nicely with the overall planning that the task force is doing.
He said river access is key.
"Regaining access and making connections between the rivers, the waterfronts and the communities is the No. 1 concern expressed by those attending development meetings," Woodwell said. "There are pieces in place -- on the North Shore, the South Side and in the Strip --but we don't yet have an interconnected system. A lot of people are interested in it and working on it now."
Assessing the water quality of the rivers and their major tributaries, and how that quality affects public access and use, is the other half of the 3R -- 2N study program.
Goto, Tim Collins, the program director, and Kathy Knauer, Three Rivers Wet Weather program manager, have been systematically sampling cross sections of the rivers and streams this summer from the same boat the riverbank assessment team uses. They've found pollution, but it doesn't measure up to urban-myth levels.
"There's not a lot of information currently available on river water quality, and public knowledge is presumptive. The water quality is better than we expected, except that the streams are in bad shape," Collins said as he and Knauer dip out water samples near each shore and in the middle of the Ohio River under the West End Bridge.
The sample bottles are labeled for location and tested later for unhealthy E. coli bacteria, fecal coliform, total coliform, ammonia, dissolved solids, iron, hardness and alkalinity at Allegheny County Health Department and Allegheny County Sanitary Authority laboratories. Sampling will continue until November.
"We're in the process of mapping out an integrated overview of the entire countywide river and stream system," Collins said. "We're beginning to get a sense of the cause and effects of different stream systems, culverted creeks and sewer outfalls bringing water into the rivers."
With that, Collins guns the boat over to the south side of the Ohio River, where Saw Mill Run enters under the spaghetti tangle of roads bridges and culverts that is the West End Circle.
Collins uses the motor to go into the creek culverts as far as he dares, then pulls it up and grabs a long wooden pole from its storage place along one side of the boat. He uses the pole like a gondolier to push the boat further upstream through dark cave-like culverts to the first riffle. Then he pulls on hip boots and jumps into the creek to take samples as several small fish dart for cover.
"We try to get up to the riffles to do the sampling so we don't get so much back flow from the rivers," he said.
"We're looking to see if the streams can sustain life by testing for things like iron, acid mine drainage, bacteria and sewer overflows," said Knauer. "We're not really looking at the data in terms of identifying sources of pollution, but that may come out of it down the road."
Knauer said they also are gathering information on streams that have been culverted and channeled into the sewer system.
"Alcosan has identified 21 culverted streams that feed into the treatment plant," she said. "We're looking at the potential for daylighting [opening up] some of these streams where it would be ecologically beneficial."
Chartiers Creek, which flows into the Ohio at McKees Rocks after meandering polluted and brown for 52 miles through 40 communities in Washington and Allegheny counties, is the next stop for the water samplers.
As we cruise up the rain-swollen creek, under power lines and past train cars on sidings and boxy car-sized concrete platforms on the creek bank where combined sewers overflow after storms, Collins said that despite its reputation as a dead stream, they have seen a variety of fish, plus muskrats, beavers and kingfishers.
Almost on cue, a great blue heron unfolds itself from a creekside perch low in an arching willow, and flaps slowly up into the air ahead of the boat.
"During the Industrial Revolution, we lost a lot of access to our rivers and creeks," Collins said. "The truth is that right now, the combined sewer overflow structures are some of the best points of public access.
"The idea of this project is to combine water quality data with biodiversity information and assess the nature of the post-industrial opportunity along the rivers and streams."
Around a gentle creek curve, we see two men on lunch break get out of a plumbing truck and set up fishing rods on top of Alcosan's combined sewer outfall No. 13, which, because of recent rains, is doing what it is supposed to be doing -- overflowing with storm runoff and untreated sewage into the creek.
"The popular view is that the rivers around the city are filled with crap and the riverbanks are degraded," Collins said. "People think it's important to preserve water quality and access and biodiversity on the Allegheny River up in the Allegheny National Forest, but they don't realize that the rivers here can and do have those same values and need the same attention."
Don Hopey is a Post-Gazette staff writer. Martha Rial is a PG staff photographer.
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