McKees Rocks sues Alcosan over construction, saying it will ruin borough businesses

MCKEES ROCKS — Community and business members of the McKees Rocks borough gathered Tuesday to protest a proposed construction plan for a waste-water tunnel under the Ohio River in the borough.

The borough also filed a lawsuit Tuesday against the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (Alcosan) contending that the construction of the 14-foot wide, 0.8 mile long tunnel under the Ohio River to carry sewage to a treatment facility at Wood Run the North Side of Pittsburgh, would adversely affect the business district.

Construction is slated to begin in March 2023, with the project operating in 2027 as part of the authority’s Wet Weather Plan. The tunnel is estimated to produce about 200,000 cubic yards of material.

A news release alleges that the purchase of the former Crivelli Chevrolet site to become an excavation and hauling point will have years’ long traffic impacts that will destroy nearby taxpayer-funded community reinvestment projects, making the area more dangerous for pedestrians and drivers and residents will experience significant noise, odors, runoff, dust, dirt and associated environmental impacts.

In the complaint, the borough asserts that the authority’s purchase the land - absent public process as mandated by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Consent Decree - will “set back decades of progress, destroy the next generation of progress, and have deleterious economic, social and environmental effects on its business district and residents including low-income black families at Hays Manor, a county-owned affordable housing property located across the street from the proposed dumping site.”

“Imagine a perpetual, massive open pit 150-feet-deep and as large as a football field that would be the dumping and hauling station for millions pounds of dirt and sludge for at least five years,” said Archie Brinza, McKees Rocks Borough Council President. “Now imagine that project -- and all of the dump trucks, debris and construction traffic that goes along with it -- at the gateway to your neighborhood’s business district for decades, adjacent to low-income residents and on one of the most highly valued pieces of taxable property. And take it one step further. Imagine this decision being made in the shadows, amid a pandemic, and without the federally mandated public process required by the Consent Decree.”

Gushing water tears up road in Pittsburgh neighborhood

Cox Media Group