By Bob Podurgiel
Progress on an infrastructure project to keep stormwater from entering the sanitary sewers beneath two streets in the Cubbage Hill neighborhood of Carnegie received an update from Borough Councilman Rick D’Loss, chairman of the public works committee, at council’s March 13 meeting.
“It is over a half-million-dollar project, but 85% is coming from grant money, with the borough paying only 15%,” D’Loss said.
The goal of the project is to replace and separate combined stormwater and sanitary sewers on 7th Avenue and Cubbage Street.
Jet Jack, Inc. has been working for the past two weeks excavating the old sewer lines which date from the 1930s and 1940s. In place of the older pipes, workers are laying down new PVC piping impervious to water infiltration and installing separate piping to carry stormwater.
In a unanimous vote, council members authorized paying Jet Jack $117,729.
D’Loss said the payment represented one-quarter of the total cost of the work and added another sewer project will soon begin in the Irishtown neighborhood of Carnegie that borders West Main from First to Third streets.
“Cameras will be used to televise the sewers to make sure that our maps are accurate,” he said.
Council President Phil Boyd said, “I am grateful the Cubbage Hill project has gone off without a hitch.”
The work has caused some minor traffic detours as Cubbage Street is a main artery connecting Carnegie to Collier Township.
Alcosan, the Allegheny County agency serving most of the municipal sewer systems in the county, is under a consent decree from the federal Environmental Protection Agency to end sewage overflows into local streams and creeks.
The overflows often occur during wet weather when combined storm and sanitary sewers exceed capacity, dumping untreated sewage into creeks and streams. In Carnegie, those overflows go into Chartiers Creek.
Alcosan estimates the cost of fixing the sewer problem in the county at $2 billion.