The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, better known as Alcosan, is in a world of hurt.
Not only is it under a very expensive ($2 billion) federal mandate to halt – or, in the least, severely curtail – sewage overflow from its system into local waterways, serious questions have arisen over calculations it used to formulate the plan.
As the Post-Gazette reported last month, citing RAND Corp. research, Alcosan’s estimate that an astounding 9 billion gallons of sewage-tainted overflow entered those waters in each of the last two years is off. Way off. Under-estimated by as much as 6 billion gallons in each of those two years.
Thus, as much as 30 billion gallons of sewage-laced stormwater could have escaped into the region’s waterways over the last two years, the report says.
It appears that Alcosan used outdated rainfall modeling. But it also forces another pertinent public policy question:
Faced with such a daunting and expensive challenge, and now a seriously bad miscalculation, how does it justify this week’s breaking news (as reported by the Tribune-Review)?
“Map lets you track your flush to the Alcosan plant,” read the headline on triblive.com late Thursday afternoon.
Thanks to a partnership with the 3 Rivers Wet Weather (3RWW) nonprofit, the “’Follow the Flush’ interactive map allows the public to track the wastewater from their home, or any other address, to the Alcosan treatment plant on Pittsburgh’s North Side.”
And, hey, not only is the path of your No. 1 and No. 2 – or anything else that manages to make its way into your commode — mapped out, so too is the distance and time involved (in typically dry weather, it should be noted).
What, no built-in calculator to give a convenient miles per hour measure?
Just what is 3 Rivers Wet Weather? According to its website, it’s a “nonprofit environmental organization created in 1998” to support the efforts of Allegheny County and the City of Pittsburgh to better understand its wet weather overflow problems.
It’s a joint effort of Alcosan and the county Health Department and “historically has been funded by federal, state and local resources.”
Now, it might very well provide the valuable services it says it does. That being, according to its website:
“(B)y helping communities address the issue of untreated sewage and stormwater affecting the region’s waterways.
“To promote the most cost-effective, long-term, sustainable solutions, 3RWW develops technical guidance and resources to assist municipalities with regulatory compliance, convenes forums to encourage a consensus-based approach for feasible and affordable wet weather planning, educates the public and advocates inter-municipal partnerships which will lead to consolidation of the fragmented municipal sewer collection system.”
Indeed, and to be fair, there certainly is a practical application for sewerage officials to understand their infrastructure and flow rates and what not.
And perhaps, just perhaps, the “Follow the Flush” program will help Alcosan generate a little “buy-in” from customers who surely will be paying more than a pretty penny to bring the region’s sewers up to federal snuff.
Nonetheless, it will strike more than a few reasonable people as a silly public relations priority, especially when the agency promulgating it appears to have done such a woeful job wrapping its head around the full depth of the detritus it really is in.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
