Last week, thirty enthusiastic ARCS women toured the ALCOSAN facility in an event organized by Jennifer Martin.
Engineer and guide John Findley explained that, until 1959 when ALCOSAN began cleaning wastewater, all Pittsburgh sewage went directly into our rivers. Today, ALCOSAN covers 300 square miles and serves approximately 900,000 people. “Due to the topography of Allegheny County, if the marble rolls one way,” said Findley, “the wastewater stream comes to us. If it rolls the other way, it goes into a municipal or other wastewater cleaning facility.”
As we walked through the plant, Findley noted that ALCOSAN maintains 90 miles of pipeline along the rivers and processes up to 250 million gallons of wastewater a day. Below, Debbie Scully and Linda Ban gaze over the river where the processed wastewater spills back into the Ohio River – at that spot, approximately 120,000 gallons a minute.
