The Nine Mile Run Project

For anyone reading the blog, here's some background on the Nine Mile Run Watershed reclamation project. Credit for this information goes to the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association website.

Above: reconstructed stream meanders and riffles. Photo from a spring 2008 RiverQuest/ASSET teacher workshop.

Nine Mile Run is a small stream that flows through Pittsburgh's East End. You don't need to cross a bridge to drive over Nine Mile Run because it is almost entirely underground. At the turn of the 20th century, open water was not viewed as an asset to the community. Streams were often seen as a means to transport trash and sewage away from homes. They were also viewed as hindrances to the "progress" of city building and were more often than not, piped underground.

Nine Mile Run was put in underground pipes, or culverts, starting in the early 20th century. However, because the stream runs through Frick Park, about a third of the stream was left above ground. Today the stream first emerges from its culverts in Frick Park and flows through the park to the Monongahela River. That's a 2.2 mile stretch of open water, a nearly unheard of amount for a city the size of Pittsburgh .

The Nine Mile Run Watershed Association website, from whence this background information comes, includes this very descriptive historical quote:

"During the hot dry months of summer the Run is a trickling rivulet of filth, and the odor emanating from it and from the decaying matter left exposed in the dry channel are decidedly disagreeable and a positive MENACE TO HEALTH."

-Taken from an Edgewood Town Meeting on January 11, 1913 where a vote to change the course of Nine Mile Run and pipe it underground was proposed

Nine Mile Run has come a long way through a recent reclamation project. But even today, Pittsburgh (much like cities throughout the northeastern corridor of the USA) is saddled with the issue of Combined Sewer Overflow. Many sewer lines beneath the city are constructed to deal with both storm runoff and municipal sewage. When an excess of rain falls, and in some cases 1/10 of an inch of rain is "excess," the combined sewer overflows into rivers and streams.

They were designed to do this, in a time when it was thought more health conscious to have sanitary sewage back up into waterways instead of up onto city streets. When the same river that carries "away" sewage also provides a city's drinking water--there's a problem!

The Nine Mile Run project serves as a model and testing ground where cost-effective and citizen based projects continue to explore ways to reduce stormwater runoff from roofs and impermeable paved surfaces.

Learn more at the Nine Mile Run Watershed Association website: http://www.ninemilerun.org/