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EPA Awards $4.85 Million Grant for Three Rivers Wet Weather Program

Release Date: 8/1/2001
Contact Information: Roy Seneca 215-814-5567

Contact: Roy Seneca 215-814-5567
PITTSBURGH – The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency has awarded a $4.85 million grant to the Three Rivers Wet Weather Demonstration Program to help local governments in Allegheny County correct problems with deteriorating sanitary sewers.

The program focuses on more than 50 communities in Allegheny County that have had sewage overflow problems. Since 1998, EPA has awarded $12 million to this program.

Part of the EPA grant will be used for municipal demonstration projects allowing communities to immediately reduce some of the overflows with technologies that include:

• Internal inspection, testing and grouting of sewer pipes to seal leaks;
• No-dig trenchless pipe replacement wherein an existing leaking pipe is expanded to the point of breakage and new pipe is slipped through the expanded diameter of the existing pipe;
• No-dig trenchless sewer lining of a damaged or broken pipe by injection of a cured-in-place resin that forms a pipe liner;
• Manhole repair by installation of a hydraulic cement mixture to seal leaks.


Funding also will help develop a long term solution to sewage overflow problems, and be used to educate communities through public meetings and seminars on how important it is for them to work together to correct sewage overflow problems.

The program has already funded 19 projects to correct overflow problems in local municipalities. These include removing of a catch basin in Emsworth that was diverting more than 18,000 gallons of stream water a day into the Emsworth sanitary sewer system, and replacing sanitary sewers in Castle Shannon. Details on these and other funded projects are explained on the Three Rivers Wet Weather program’s website at www.3riverswetweather.org.

During heavy rainfalls and snowmelt, sanitary sewers in Allegheny County overflow and discharge more than 16 billion gallons of raw sewage each year into area streams and the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio rivers.

The federal Clean Water Act requires municipalities to control sanitary sewer overflows to help protect public health and the environment.