Pittsburgh allocates $1.8 million for Riverview Park landslide repairs

More than $1.8 million will be allocated to address landslides around Riverview Park on Pittsburgh’s North Side, Mayor Bill Peduto’s administration announced Wednesday.

The money will come from the Regional Asset District’s capital fund and the first area to be addressed is the hill near Riverview Park’s Chapel Shelter.

“Residents are eager to see the Chapel Shelter landslide and the collapsing portion of Riverview Avenue fixed so they can get back to enjoying Riverview Park,” Councilman Bobby Wilson, who represents the area, said in a statement.

Landslides have long been an issue in the area around the 259-acre park which borders Perrysville Avenue, Woods Run, and Marshall Avenue on the steep North Side hills.

“Fixing those landslides is important to control the waterflow and the roads,” Kinsey Casey, Peduto’s chief operating officer, said. “There’s actually multiple slides in Riverview and lots of water issues.”

A bulk of the money will be spent on the hillside near the Chapel Shelter, which is a popular site for weddings since its 2008 restoration.

“I am relieved the city has been able to maintain this essential funding to move forward with the remediation of the Chapel Shelter landslide,” Wilson said.

It is the latest funding the city has allocated for making repairs after landslides, which have become more common in the last few years.

Earlier this year, $2.6 million in work was done to repair four slides that included ones in the West End, Squirrel Hill, the North Side and Oakland. In 2018, the city spent more than $1 million repairing a slide that damaged a home in Duquesne Heights.

Karina Hicks, the city’s Director of Mobility and Infrastructure, has attributed the slides to increased rain and the city’s hilly topography, but they’re not a new problem for the region.

In 1982, the U.S. Geological Survey published a 78-page report studying landslides in the region.

“The small landslide is the persistent hazard throughout the Greater Pittsburgh region,” John S. Pomeroy wrote in the 38-year-old report. “The Allegheny Department of Planning and Development estimated that the yearly cost of damage from landsliding in that county from 1970 to 1974 was nearly $2 million.”

Adjusting for inflation, that figure is the equivalent of $11 million today.