Residents express anger over river level
At a town hall in Monongahela, they claimed the Mon River has dropped by 6 feet due to a locks and dam removal project.
At a town hall in Monongahela, they claimed the Mon River has dropped by 6 feet due to a locks and dam removal project.
Exasperated boaters and business owners didn’t get the answers they wanted Thursday night concerning reduced water levels in the Monongahela River.
Representatives from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Port of Pittsburgh Commission fielded questions and listened to the concerns of boaters and business owners during a town hall hosted by the Monongahela Area Revitalization Corporation at the Monongahela Fire Department Social Hall.
A couple dozen people who have boats docked at facilities, including many from the Carousel Marina along the Monongahela River, showed up to the event, conveying the issues they’ve encountered since the start of Locks and Dam 3’s removal in Elizabeth.
Several attendees even shouted their frustrations at Stephen Fritz, USACE mega project manager. Some boaters walked out in fits of rage, claiming that the federal government had botched the Lower Monongahela River Project.
At least 11 boaters in attendance said the river has dropped 5 or 6 feet, while the USACE maintains it’s dropped by about 2.5 feet.
“Someone needs to go back to school to learn how to be a freaking engineer, that’s all I know. Someone made a big mistake, and they better get this fixed,” boater Lynn Shallenberger of Whitaker borough said, evoking a round of applause from the audience.
David Podurgiel, a vessel operations manager for a towboat company and a representative of Waterways Association of Pittsburgh, sympathized with the outraged boaters.
“Everything you’re saying is very true,” Podurgiel said. “We have been planning for this for 30 years. I personally feel there was a misjudgment of how this was going to affect us, how low the river was going to come. Yes, I 100% believe that we are down 6 feet.”
In his industry, Podurgiel said there’s an average of four to five boat groundings occur per week on the Mon.
A marina owner told Fritz it will cost her hundreds of thousands of dollars to dredge out her facility in order for boats to safely enter and exit the river. At least six boat owners said they are worried about damaging their boats if they try to bring them back on land.
“There’s no law that gives us the authority to help private owners on a river,” Fritz said.
Fritz told the attendees several times that USACE is not authorized to adjust shoreside facilities owned by commercial or private businesses.
Fritz explained that Section 10 of the Rivers and Harbors Act, a federal law passed in 1899, requires private, commercial and government owners to obtain a permit for the construction of a facility on a navigable waterway. Section 10 also requires permit holders to make changes to their facilities if a federal government project necessitates modifications to maintain a navigable waterway.
Since the Lower Monongahela River Project was authorized in 1992, USACE has relocated about 50 riverside government facilities, including ones in McKeesport, Glassport, Elizabeth, Dravosburg and Charleroi.
“We invested part of the project funding to make sure that those facilities owned by agencies of government were made whole,” Fritz said.
USACE has a relocation agreement in place with Elizabeth for the borough’s Riverfront Park.
“So they’re going to be relocating that, adjusting it for the new pool level at the new elevation,” Fritz said.
Fritz said the City of Monongahela and its municipal authority have a relocation agreement “in their hands” that requires a signature. He estimated that USACE will invest somewhere between $4 million and $6 million to adjust the Aquatorium and the boat ramp beside it.
Tanya Chaney, president of Aquatorium Innovations, asked Fritz when that project will start and how it will affect the facility, as she looks ahead to book talent for next summer’s concert series.
Fritz told her it will be the city’s responsibility after the relocation agreement is signed.
“It depends on how long it’s going to take the City of Monongahela engineer to do the design, advertise it for construction and then construct it,” he said. “I can’t give you a time frame on that because I don’t see that schedule. But once it goes to the City of Monongahela, they’re pretty much in charge of monitoring the progress of that to get it done as quickly as possible.
“How does that help me plan?” Chaney asked.
“I can’t answer that question,” Fritz responded.
Fritz encouraged private owners to contact the Port of Pittsburgh Commission to see if they can help out in any way.
“I really appreciate you coming out tonight. I know it wasn’t easy for any of you, wasn’t easy for us,” Fritz said.
Fritz added that USACE will commit to looking at river levels in Charleroi and Elizabeth.
“But I’m going to see where those differences (in levels) might be to see if there’s something we’re missing in our data,” he said.