PublicSource | News for a better Pittsburgh (https://www.publicsource.org/category/environment/)
Mercury, which damages young brains, is flowing through industrial wastewater into the Ohio River. But the multi-state agency tasked with keeping the waterway clean hasn’t tightened controls on this pollution because it doesn’t have the authority to do so.
Editor's note, Jan. 11: Google issued a statement in response to this first-person essay. Compelling personal stories
told by the people living them. In 2017, I was working for Google in the Bay Area of California, lamenting the ever-rising cost of housing, when a co-worker mentioned he was moving to Pittsburgh. I talked it over with my partner, and we did some basic research.
The Ohio River has been called “the most polluted river in America,” but that’s an incomplete portrait of a nearly thousand-mile-long river teeming with biodiversity, history and culture.
Two weeks ago, tests showed that the drinking water from Coraopolis Water and Sewer Authority contained some of the highest levels of PFAS chemicals found in the 96 water sources tested throughout the the state. The authority's board approved an expense of $5,000 to pay for additional testing of its drinking water.
Huntington is one of a dozen levee systems in the basin that the Corps of Engineers classifies as a “high risk” due to the combination of aging infrastructure and the people and property that would be harmed if the system were to fail. The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates aging levee systems like these across the country will need $80 billion in upgrades within the next decade.
To slow the flow, residents have adopted the idea of strategic depaving. Depaving, or removing unnecessary pavement, creates the opportunity for more greenspace and makes it more likely that rainwater would be absorbed rather than entering the outdated infrastructure.
