Climate change has warped the Pittsburgh region’s weather patterns, and residents in flood-prone pockets of the county are on alert for the next disaster. Local leaders have emerged in a battle to connect their communities with the right resources.
Pittsburgh’s Public Source interviewed three leaders about the challenges and opportunities for flood prevention:
- Lisa Werder Brown is founder and executive director of the Watersheds of South Pittsburgh, serving Saw Mill Run.
- Annie Quinn is founder and director of the Mon Water Project, serving the neighborhoods along the East End’s Four Mile Run and Hazelwood.
- Mary Ellen Ramage is Etna borough manager.
These three women represent only a small fraction of the numerous flood zones throughout the Pittsburgh area, which also include Girty’s Run in Millvale; Sharpsburg; Luis Run; Woods Run; Negley Run (adjacent to Washington Boulevard); Carnegie, Heidelberg, Greenfield and Oakdale.
“Any low-lying area in the county,” Werder Brown said, is probably at risk of flood.
The recurring costs borne by those communities make flooding a matter of equity to some local leaders. Low-lying areas suffer economic disinvestment as frequent floods drive away new businesses and homebuyers. Depressed housing markets in flood-prone areas trap homeowners who are unable to recoup their losses and move on; some have accrued debt to fix water damage.
Compounding the problem, the City of Pittsburgh has a combined stormwater and sewer system, which means both kinds of water flow through the same pipes. During heavy rains, the pipes can exceed capacity, pushing sewage into streams and rivers.
Community leaders say solutions are in reach — if they have the right support.
Lisa Werder Brown
- Executive director, Watersheds of South Pittsburgh
- Area: South Hills
- Working on floods in South Pittsburgh since 2014
- Reason for hope: It really only takes one person.
Watersheds of South Pittsburgh was created to better manage the Saw Mill Run Watershed, a floodplain that includes 12 municipalities and 14 Pittsburgh neighborhoods.
Werder Brown’s goal is to restore an old vision of what the floodplain could have been.
In 1910, prominent landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. recommended that the City of Pittsburgh not build on the Saw Mill floodplain. Instead, he suggested the city develop a linear park along Saw Mill Run, similar to Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
“It would be an amenity to the neighborhoods. It would be this beautiful entrance into the City of Pittsburgh,” Werder Brown said. This, of course, did not happen. “By 1939, the entire floodplain was developed.”
Today, some residents experience flooding up to five times a year according to Werder Brown.
“It’s this perpetual circle of devastation and then disinvestment. Because who’s going to want to invest in a property that continues to be flooded?”
A decade ago, the Watersheds of South Pittsburgh embraced Olmsted’s original vision for a green boulevard. But the group has been unable to secure funding to move it forward.
“We don’t get any federal funding to alleviate any of these issues,” Werder Brown said, due to the way the government categorizes kinds of flooding.
In Allegheny County, floods generally aren’t hurricane-level catastrophes that receive presidential declarations of emergency. President Barack Obama was the last president to declare an emergency in Allegheny County after storms, tornadoes and floods that hit in the summer of 2013.
Presidential emergency declaration is required to open up FEMA assistance. But that is only granted at the request of the governor and must clear high damage thresholds.
Drew Leister, of North Fayette, a volunteer with Watersheds of South Pittsburgh and watershed steward through Penn State, Kylee Slobodnik, of Natrona Heights, a Student Conservation Association fellow and green space coordinator with WSP, Lisa Werder Brown, the executive director of WSP, and Caitlin Mitchell, the program and outreach coordinator with WSP, observe pollution-tolerant macro-invertebrate specimens as they do a study in the Saw Mill Run flood zone on Nov. 8, in Beechview. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/Pittsburgh’s Public Source)
This is frustrating to Werder Brown, who has seen residents battle successive, life-altering floods, none of which resulted in a presidential declaration. “I mean, we had people die on Washington Boulevard and Negley Run and they did some-ish,” Werder Brown said. “They put up a warning system, but they didn’t do anything about the actual flooding.”
The hyper-local nature of flooding in Pittsburgh makes it difficult to organize across geographic boundaries or motivate local governments to sustain progress, Werder Brown said.
“Pockets of the population are impacted on a regular basis,” she said. “When it happens, it’s put uppermost in everybody’s mind and then you wait a year and then everybody’s forgotten about it” — except, of course, individuals who expect to be flooded again.
Despite the challenges, Werder Brown also sees opportunities. For one, she believes that it really only takes one full-time, paid leader who is dedicated to create change.
“I don’t want to seem like I’m patting myself on the back,” she said, but “folks were not thinking about it that much until I started really working in Saw Mill Run.”
Mary Ellen Ramage
- Manager, Etna Borough
- Area: Pine Creek Watershed
- Working on floods since: 1996
- Reason for hope: Intergovernmental cooperation
Ramage has managed Etna for 35 years. After Hurricane Ivan submerged the town in 2004, Etna created a Green Master Plan.
“We made a conscious decision after the flood in 2004,” Ramage said, “to look at every project that we’re taking into consideration — whether it be road paving, a park — to look at the lens of stormwater.”
Ramage said the government continues to consider stormwater management at every opportunity.
Infrastructure projects take time and often require rounds of funding. Ramage is concerned about changes in the federal government that create confusion and uncertainty.
Green initiatives, she said, “are being pulled back.” She and other government officials are unclear as to which opportunities are standing and which have been repealed.
Ramage also believes strongly in the power of regional intergovernmental networks.
Before Ivan, Ramage said there was “a lot of this pointing back and forth.” Ivan united them under a common purpose.
After the hurricane, Etna relied heavily on the North Hills Council of Governments — a coalition of 21 municipalities — to draw up plans for flood mitigation.
“We were the first group in the state of Pennsylvania to adopt a multi-municipal stormwater management ordinance, so we were all playing by the same rules,” she said.
Annie Quinn
- Founder and executive director, Mon Water Project
- Area: East End
- Working on floods since: 2015
- Reason for hope: Ohio River Basin Restoration Program Act
The Mon Water Project is dedicated to flood management for the Four Mile Run watershed, which includes Schenley Park and neighborhoods such as Greenfield, Hazelwood, Oakland and Squirrel Hill.
For years, Quinn has worked on a project to restore Panther Hollow Lake in Schenley Park, which she believes could double as a site for recreation and stormwater management.
Quinn imagines a future for Panther Hollow that mimics its past, when Pittsburghers could rent paddle boats in the summer and skate on its icy surface in the winter.
Now the lake is a “cesspool,” she said. “It has a full algae bloom that has eliminated all life within it. It used to be nine feet deep and now it’s four inches.”
Quinn said that she has generated momentum among city officials for restoring the lake, but less than a year ago, the City of Pittsburgh pulled most funding for the Four Mile Run project. Panther Hollow was one piece of the original project.
Quinn said “$8.7 million has been spent to design the Four Mile Run project,” from 2018 to 2025. But since? “Stormwater projects in the City of Pittsburgh have been defunded almost across the board.”
Outside of Pittsburgh, many borough leaders and watershed organizations are unpaid volunteers who lack the time or experience to understand the intricacies of stormwater management laws and grant opportunities.
“Very few people are funding this work,” Quinn said.
But the Ohio River Basin Alliance, a coalition of water managers across 15 states, could change this. Last year the organization introduced the Ohio River Restoration Program Act to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Quinn is the diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility co-chair for the organization, and believes the bill would “revolutionize” funding for flood mitigation in Allegheny County.
The restoration program created by the act would establish an EPA office to protect the whole watershed, similar to the Great Lakes or Chesapeake Bay Program offices.
It would provide funding to a whole host of projects using money from the federal budget. This could mean improved dams and levies, home buyouts, enhanced early warning systems and better collaboration across municipal lines.
Hannah Frances Johansson is a former intern for Pittsburgh’s Public Source and a reporter for Point Park’s Center for Media Innovation Newsroom and can be reached at hannah.johansson@pointpark.edu.
This story was fact-checked by Femi Horrall.
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