Pittsburgh police receive water shut-off notice

The Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority for a second time in two years Friday threatened to shut off water at a city-occupied building for failure to pay a past due bill.

PWSA posted a water shut-off notice at city police headquarters on the North Side’s Western Avenue, giving the city three days to pay $630.37.

Pittsburgh leases the building from Western Partners LTD, a subsidiary of East Liberty-based Ross Development Co., but is responsible for paying water and sewer bills, according to city officials. PWSA bills the property owner, according to authority spokesman Will Pickering.

Anthony J. Ross, president and CEO of Ross Development, said the company was looking into the situation.

Tim McNulty, spokesman for Mayor Bill Peduto, said the city paid the bill Tuesday.

“Why they put up a notice, I don’t have an answer for that,” he said.

Pickering said the vendor might not have received notice that the bill had been paid.

“In that time period from Tuesday to today, there’s a chance that the message did not get made,” Pickering said Friday.

“We’ve instructed our vendor to notify PWSA management before posting city properties. This has happened before and we’re taking a look at our vendor, too. We could have handled this off-line.”

PWSA in 2018 erroneously posted water shut-off notices at the City-County Building, Downtown, housing City Council, the Mayor’s Office and most city departments. Pittsburgh at the time did not pay for water and sewer services.

The authority said the posting was an oversight on the part of the vendor.