Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
May 14, 2007
By Don Hopey,
The recreational boating season has opened and that means the orange "CSO" flags, indicating poor water quality caused by combined sewer overflows, will soon be flapping in the breeze along Pittsburgh area rivers.
The Allegheny County Health Department's daily river water advisories will begin Wednesday.
The alert flags will fly from poles at 32 locations along the Allegheny, Monongahela, Ohio and Youghiogheny rivers whenever rainfall causes a combination of storm water and raw sewage to overflow into those rivers.
A "CSO alert" doesn't prohibit recreational activity on the rivers, but cautions people to minimize water contact if they have weakened immune systems or open cuts or wounds that are vulnerable to infection, said Dr. Bruce Dixon, Allegheny County health director.
This is the 13th year that the county has issued the water quality advisories, and the frequency and duration of the alerts are directly tied to the amount of rainfall the region receives.
Last summer, which was relatively dry, 10 alerts were issued and lasted an average of 51/2 days each, or 55 days total. In 2004, by comparison, there were just six alerts issued, but they lasted a record high 125 days.
In 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency threatened to fine the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority and its member municipalities $275 million if they continued to discharge sewage into the rivers, but it hasn't followed through on the threat or reached an agreement with the sewer authority on how to address the problem.
There are 414 combined sewer overflows in Allegheny County, 279 of them in the Alcosan service area. There are also 50 sanitary sewer overflows in the Alcosan system.
Eliminating sanitary sewer overflows and limiting the combined sewer overflows to a half-dozen days or fewer annually will cost Alcosan an estimated $1 billion, and its member municipalities and the city another $2 billion.
If boaters and others using the rivers don't want to look for the flags or wait until they get to the rivers to find out about water quality, they can get that information from the Health Department's river water advisory hot line at 412-687-2243, or the department's Web site at www.achd.net.
Don Hopey can be reached at dhopey@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1983.