Opinion: Editorial blames 4MR residents for stalled stormwater project | The Homepage

A Four Mile Run resident and his 8-year-old son trapped on top of their car await rescue during the 2016 flood. The stormwater project meant to prevent floods like this was defunded in late 2024. Photo by Justin Macey

By Ziggy Edwards and Ray Gerard for Junction Coalition

Authors’ note: Junction Coalition became aware of a recent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette editorial blaming residents of Four Mile Run for Pittsburgh Water’s defunding of flood control efforts in the neighborhood. The editorial labels us conspiracy theorists, then concludes that residents should have allowed the community-erasing Mon-Oakland Connector project to proceed if they wanted relief from dangerous 75-year flooding events on their streets. Residents have warned of this outcome for years.

Junction Coalition stands in solidarity with striking Post-Gazette writers. However, we need to correct the record. The P-G rejected our response, so we are publishing it here. It has also been published online at junctioncoalition.org.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s July 13 editorial, “The real reason Four Mile Run is still a flood trap” ignores or mangles basic facts in an effort to rewrite history and blame the victims of potentially catastrophic flooding in The Run. Indeed, this could happen at any time, but not because our community exposed an attempted land grab by privateers operating behind closed doors.

To be clear, the Junction Hollow Trail is part of Schenley Park. The Post-Gazette editorial blandly labels the proposed Mon-Oakland Connector route a “corridor” to obscure its true nature: a private road through a public park.

Shuttle road predated flood control

Flood control remained unfunded long after the Mon-Oakland Connector was announced. After decades of being told Pittsburgh lacked funds to address flooding in our neighborhood, Run residents learned of the roadway from an Aug. 29, 2015, Post-Gazette article. The city planned to spend $26 million to connect Oakland university campuses with Hazelwood Green, eliminating The Run’s only community green space. Privately-operated “driverless shuttles” serving only university personnel and students would run every five minutes, 24/7.

The total absence of communication with affected residents about this major project violated Pennsylvania’s Sunshine Act. The 2015 Post-Gazette article also reported on a newly formed public-private partnership comprising the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, Carnegie Mellon University and University of Pittsburgh. This group applied for a $3 million multimodal grant for the project with the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development. According to documents obtained through Right-to-Know requests, the application contained numerous false statements, which the application form states is “punishable by criminal prosecution.” Eventually, the department deemed the application “incomplete” and let it expire.

City officials assured residents that the multimodal grant would contain flood control measures. The claim was quickly proven false, as that specific grant could not be used for anything other than road construction.

Then, in August 2016, a devastating flood caught on camera (and reported by now-retired Post-Gazette columnist Brian O’Neill) showed our need for flood control in graphic detail. Only then were officials shamed into announcing the more than $41-million Four Mile Run Watershed Improvement Plan the following year. They called it “the gold standard” for flood mitigation going forward. The catch? Any flood control plan had to be built around the Mon-Oakland Connector — yet city and Pittsburgh Water representatives rushed to insist these were “two separate projects” happening “in tandem.”

Project budget not all for ‘core area’

The July 13 editorial criticizes residents of The Run for not generating solutions. In fact, it is hard to do that while being deceived. Several stormwater management professionals did offer ideas, which were discarded because they did not accommodate the Mon-Oakland Connector. So Pittsburgh Water spent eight years and $8.7 million designing something that would work for the shuttle road and accommodate 10-year floods, even though The Run has experienced multiple 25- and 75-year floods in a single decade.

Only $14 million of the project budget was slated for flood control in what a 2020 email from Pittsburgh Water Senior Manager of Public Affairs Rebecca Zito referred to as the “core area.” She wrote, “The remaining funding can go towards future projects in the upper portions of the watershed, [and] provide opportunities to collaborate with the universities and other community organizations on future stormwater projects.”

At a Sept. 15, 2020, public meeting about the stormwater project, participants asked again for reassurance that the work would go forward regardless of the fate of the Mon-Oakland Connector.

“We are going to do the stormwater project no matter what,” the water authority responded. “If the roadway stopped being planned, we would have to amend our permit, which would result in a paperwork review for PA DEP and some timing changes, but we would still do our project. For the stormwater project, the money is committed, the PWSA board has approved it, the design is essentially complete and we are moving forward with it.”

Who actually killed the MOC?

Opposition to the Mon-Oakland Connector was never confined to a handful of Run residents. As the Post-Gazette admits, the shuttle road project became a defining issue of former mayor Bill Peduto’s second term. Mr. Peduto became Pittsburgh’s first incumbent mayor to be unseated since 1933. Pittsburgh’s taxpayers and voters had thoroughly vetted and rejected the shuttle road.

Mayor Gainey canceled the Mon-Oakland Connector project in February 2022. Within six months of that announcement, Pittsburgh Water removed all green infrastructure elements from the stormwater plan. But they continued to promise Run residents the project would go forward.

Despite its zombie status, the Mon-Oakland Connector enjoyed a healthy budget well into 2022. The Post-Gazette implies that former District 5 city councilor Corey O’Connor dealt the project’s death blow by removing $4.15 million from its budget in 2020 — although the same amount reappeared in the 2022 Mon-Oakland Connector budget, which totaled about $7 million. By 2021 when Mayor Gainey campaigned against it, the Mon-Oakland Connector had supposedly become a non-issue.

So which is it: Did Mayor Gainey doom The Run to languish without a private roadway bulldozed through it, or did he merely glom onto Mr. O’Connor’s heroic pantomime of destroying the Mon-Oakland Connector?

Either way, Pittsburgh Water quietly defunded their “gold standard” proposed solution without public discussion at the end of 2024. The water authority didn’t inform the public for another few months.

Flooding solutions, not development

No one — including the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection — believes the Mon-Oakland Connector was essential to successful flood control in The Run. In fact, the department’s technical deficiency letters in response to Pittsburgh Water’s joint permit application contained questions about how including the Mon-Oakland Connector in the project furthered Pittsburgh Water’s stated goal of managing stormwater in the area.

The Mon-Oakland Connector hobbled flood control from the beginning, and the stormwater project could be far more effective without it. Dedicated public servants would seize this opportunity to improve on the existing design — if they prioritized residents’ safety above the dreams of universities, foundations and developers.

The Remaking Cities Institute of Carnegie Mellon University stated its vision for The Run in its 2009 report, “Remaking Hazelwood.” This vision describes The Run, in essence, as land that should one day be part of Hazelwood Green, known then as the Almono site after the philanthropic partnership that owns it. The report states: “The urban design recommendations proposed in this document extend beyond the boundary of the Almono site. The end of Four Mile Run valley, the hillside and Second Avenue are all critical to the overall framework. Some of these areas are publicly held; others are privately owned. ... The support of the City of Pittsburgh and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) will be critical to the success of our vision. The Almono LP could try to purchase these sites. Failing that, the URA can support the project by purchasing those properties that are within the scope of the recommendations and making them available for redevelopment in accordance with the proposed strategy.”

The Post-Gazette dismisses the idea that moneyed interests would hinge public safety on the Mon-Oakland Connector, then proceeds to sell this “conspiracy theory” as the solution. In doing so, they echo what we “development constraints” in The Run have warned for years: No shuttle road, no flood relief.

Junction Coalition is a grassroots organization comprising residents of Four Mile Run and surrounding communities.