Mt. Lebanon continues to work toward fulfilling sewer requirements
Mt. Lebanon continues to work toward fulfilling the requirements of an administrative consent order with regard to lowering the volume of flow within the municipal sanitary sewer system.
As one of the 83 communities served by the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, Mt. Lebanon is part of the directive for Alcosan to take corrective action to mitigate excessive discharge of sewage into the area’s rivers, as ordered by U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and Allegheny County Health Department.
The consent order, the origins of which date back nearly two decades, entered a new, six-year phase in 2021, with preventing excess water from entering the sewer system as one of its goals. Alcosan and municipalities within it service area are required to determine necessary corrective projects by the end of 2023 and have them completed two years later.
Mt. Lebanon already has taken significant strides in that direction through an ongoing process of upgrades and repairs to its 160-mile system.
“I think that the investment that Mt. Lebanon has made is shown in the numbers,” municipal engineer Dan Deiseroth, president of Gateway Engineers, said. “It’s definitely clear.”
During Mt. Lebanon Commission’s discussion session Tuesday, he and Gateway’s Dennis Flynn provided an update regarding the consent order and other considerations involving sanitary sewers.
Part of the presentation involved a flow measurement called gallons per inch of pipe diameter per mile per day, and the amount throughout Mt. Lebanon’s system has dropped by 2,000 since 2008. The largest decrease, Flynn said, has been in the line along Castle Shannon Boulevard, from 8,000 gallons per inch of diameter per mile per day to 5,000.
Mt. Lebanon’s capital improvement program calls for $3.85 million to be budgeted annually for sanitary sewer improvements through 2026, funded completely by sewer surcharges. Also, the 2022 municipal budget allocates $446,670 for sanitary sewers.
The municipality also has benefited from Alcosan’s Green Revitalization of Our Waterways program, receiving $759,000 in grants since 2019.
“If we’re able to obtain a little bit more, that really does cover a good part of this,” Commissioner Craig Grella said about projects related to the consent order.
“I think Alcosan’s been a really good partner.”
He also credited municipal staff members and Gateway personnel in doing “a really good job for Mt. Lebanon, because we are way, way ahead here.”
The municipality plans to have corrective projects identified this year, well in advance of the 2023 deadline, and that could provide some financial advantages, according to Deiseroth.
“My concern is, when the whole region starts to do this and everybody has to do it at the same time, that the numbers are going to be high,” he said about bids for projects. “So I think that the more we stay ahead of the game, that’s an important thing to do. We’re in a good position, but we need to stay diligent at it.”
He also spoke about plans for Alcosan to take over ownership of intermunicipal trunk lines, larger pipes that take flow from local collector lines, within its system.
“These are long lines that go in between municipalities. People are going to argue about who should pay for what, what’s the basis for cost sharing,” Mt. Lebanon solicitor Philip Weis said. “In order to avoid all that and actually get work done, they wanted a central party to take them over. And Alcosan was really just a very logical one, considering that they’re a countywide organization and these lines flow right into their sewers.”
No cost will be involved in the transfer of ownership, he said.