The Newtown Pentacle

Thursday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Ia, Ia… look – there’s one of them now – risen from dark waters to…

Actually, that’s no Lovecraftian ‘Deep One,’ instead it’s the mascot of the ALCOSAN outfit – here in Pittsburgh – and the character’s name is ‘Frankie the Fish.’

It happened, lords and ladies… finally… it happened…

– photo by Mitch Waxman

I got to go the sewer plant in Pittsburgh.

GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

Three things:

First off – the Newtown Pentacle time warp continues to fibbulate. These shots were captured on the 19th of September of this year, with the posts being written during the second week of October.

Secondly – the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority – aka ALCOSAN – operates an enormous 59 acre sewerage and wastewater treatment plant, along the Ohio river here in Pittsburgh.

The authority holds an annual ‘Open House’ (since 2004 at least) wherein the general public is invited onto the property to see how the sewerage process works, and how tax monies are being spent. Said agency makes a big show of the Open House event, and there’s a carnival style area for families with kids to explore, with staffed booths describing the plant and its operations and there was also a giant fish tank this time around which they said was ‘new.’ I paid near zero attention to all of that.

Additionally, there were also plant tours to attend.

Third – Plant tours, did you say?

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After signing up for the tour, my neighbor Sam (who accompanied and drove me to this event) and I split away from each other.

Sam is a lettered Chemist, and his interests were pulling him towards a tour of the various laboratory rooms within the buildings, wherein the water testing is accomplished. I’ve been to DEP’s labs back in NYC, and it was a remarkably unexciting experience from a photographic POV, so I opted for the plant tour instead.

Sam disappeared. Didn’t see him again for around three days, and that was back at HQ in Dormont. Sam’s like that.

The plant tour goers were shepherded onto small shuttle buses, and our first stop was at Alcosan’s Pump House.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Oh, it’s been so long…

There was a period of around ten years of my life when I was in that sewer plant in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint at least once a month. One learned a great deal during that interval, mainly about how local NYC Government actually works. I learned a lot about urban drainage too.

Pictured is a symbolic map showing the status lights for the various pumping stations found around Pittsburgh, which push wastewater towards the Alcosan system found here at the plant.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The pump house itself is contained within a gigantic cylindrical space, and once you enter the red ceramic bricked top level, you’ll realize that you’re standing on a platform/walkway, one which connects to multiple flights of stairs that are all heading downwards. Lots and lots of ‘big’ equipment is everywhere. Cranes on the ceiling, all that jazz.

I never caught our guide’s name but he had a fabulous mustache. He was obviously a Boss, or at least a Senior level employee at Alcosan. He was offering the ‘millions of gallons per hour’ versus ‘square acreage of drainage area’ talk, and not delving too deeply into the various Court orders and ‘Consent Decrees’ Alcosan has been forced to accept by judges and legislatures over several decades to ‘clean up their act.’

This plant was opened in 1959, long before the Clean Water Act set a higher bar for wastewater treatment than existed previously. Saying that, Pittsburgh historically emptied both residential and industrial sewage directly into the rivers, right on through to the 1950’s when this plant opened.

During the 19th and early 20th centuries Pittsburgh had ridiculously high infection rates for water borne diseases like Typhus and Cholera.

A 2007 agreement with the Federal EPA saw Alcosan agreeing to begin a massive and expensive new project, one designed to lower the amount of combined sewer outfall water escaping into the rivers, via the construction of a diversion tunnel in which the overflows could be stored during wet weather events.

A similar sewage retention tunnel plan is part of the the post Superfund Newtown Creek for the NYC DEP, btw. Nobody who is alive right now will see that project even begin, let alone finish though. Perhaps a newborn will see it.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The shot above looks down through the cylindrical structure of the Pump House, where the actual machinery that handles the flow is found.

Since this is where most of Allegheny County ostensibly drains to, it’s theoretically the lowest point in Pittsburgh – which our guide described was eleven stories down from the surface, where we were standing. Neat!

You’re looking at the ‘Undaburgh.’

Back tomorrow with more.

---

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.