Officials rush to find short- and long-term flood solutions
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Erie Insurance Material Damage Adjustor Larry Johnson checks flood-damaged vehicles parked at the Pittsburgh Police Zone 5 parking lot on Washington Blvd. to see if his company is the insurance carrier. -
Shawn Mahoney (center) and Bob Scott (right) of Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) contractor Jet Jack Inc. muscle the heavy casing top back in position over a manhole along Washington Blvd. Monday morning. Eric Taper of the PWSA is at left. The casing an lid were knocked out of place by the raging storm water runoff during Friday's flash flood in the area. -
Shawn Mahoney (below) and Bob Scott of Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) contractor Jet Jack Inc. clean a catch basin along Washington Blvd. -
Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority (PWSA) crews clean storm drain catch basins along at Highland Dr. and Washington Blvd.
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On flood-struck Washington Boulevard Monday, crews from the agencies responsible for the overtaxed sewers there began the job of cleaning and reinforcing the system, while the region's leadership started talking about potential solutions to Friday's calamity that caused four deaths.
Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority and Allegheny County Sanitary Authority officials met and identified potential short- and long-term fixes that ranged from emergency road closures during storms to raising Washington Boulevard above flood level.
Pittsburgh Councilman Patrick Dowd, a PWSA board member whose district includes part of the area that flooded Friday, said the only real solution was to rebuild the intersection of Washington and Allegheny River Boulevard, which currently forms "a dam" at one end of a vast topographic bowl.
"No matter how large the pipe is that you build, you're always going to have a storm at some point that is too big for it," he said.
In this case, the large storm sewers running down Washington Boulevard -- 108 inches and 102 inches in diameter, respectively -- received too much water for the pipes near the Allegheny River to convey.
He said a 48-inch pipe carries water toward Alcosan's treatment plant beside the Ohio River and a 132-inch pipe carries overflow to the Allegheny River -- but that's not enough.
"The dam has to be broken and let the water naturally get to the rivers."
The flash flood that hit Friday afternoon occurred as more than 2 inches of rain fell in one hour in the watershed around Washington Boulevard, leaving motorists stranded in trapped vehicles.
Emergency workers rescued more than a dozen people from trees and the roofs of their vehicles. But a mother and her two children from Plum drowned inside their vehicle, and an Oakmont woman died when officials believe she was washed into a sewer and ended up on the bank of the Allegheny River, where her body was found Saturday.
First Published August 23, 2011 12:00 am
