ALCOSAN awards $15 million in GROW funding

Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) approved $15.1 million in grant funding in the fifth round of the organization’s Green Revitalization of Our Waterways (GROW) program.

This is part of ongoing ALCOSAN efforts to fund projects with partner municipalities.

In this round of grant funding, ALCOSAN offered grants to 23 municipalities and municipal authorities. The grants will fund 27 projects, including sewer separation and those that provide green stormwater infrastructure. These projects will remove an estimated 48 million gallons of overflow volume annually, officials said.

“It is always exciting to announce another successful year for our GROW program, helping our municipalities keep water out of the sewer system,” ALCOSAN Executive Director Arletta Scott Williams said. “We are excited to see these projects come to fruition, as every gallon that’s removed from the system is one less gallon that could end up an overflow.”

This year marked the first year with a new funding cap set at $10 million per project. Three projects — Pittsburgh’s Wightman Park green stormwater infrastructure and two sewer separation projects in Crafton — capitalized on the new funding cap and were awarded a combined $7,712,559.

Several programs that were awarded funding were based on Controlling the Source, a scientific-based, area-specific evaluation of all types of source control that ALCOSAN released earlier this year. Controlling the Source offered municipalities information regarding where projects would be cost-effective and provide the most overflow reduction. Avalon, Bellevue, Brentwood, Carnegie, Crafton, Wightman Park, Rankin and Wilkinsburg earned funding for concepts identified through that evaluation.

ALCOSAN founded the GROW program in 2016. In its first four grant cycles, it has offered $28 million worth of grants to fund 101 projects, which are expected to reduce the volume of overflows in the region’s waterways by approximately 140 million gallons.

This marked the program’s fifth grant cycle. The latest round’s grant recipients are:

• Borough of Aspinwall
• Borough of Avalon
• Bellevue Borough
• Blawnox Borough
• Brentwood Borough
• Carnegie Borough
• Churchill Borough
• Crafton Borough
• Borough of Dormont
• Emsworth Borough
• Borough of Fox Chapel
• Green Tree Borough
• Borough of Homestead
• Monroeville Municipal Authority
• Mt. Lebanon
• O’Hara Township
• City of Pittsburgh
• Penn Hills
• PWSA
• Rankin Borough
• Ross Township
• Shaler Township
• Wilkinsburg Borough

Any municipality or municipal sewer authority within ALCOSAN’s service area is eligible for grant money.

The sixth round of grants will begin later this year.