Editorial: Cleanup & questions

Laurel: To cleaner water. When you live near waterways, you know that sometimes things end up there that shouldn’t. It might be trash. It might be chemicals. It might be sewage.

But often it’s tires.

There is no way of knowing how many tires end up in rivers, lakes or streams every year. The only data comes when tires are pulled out.

On Saturday, about 20 volunteers showed up at Cedar Creek Park in Rostraver for the Mountain Watershed Association’s semiannual cleanup effort. Using canoes, they pulled around 200 tires from a short stretch of the Youghiogheny River. Some were as much as 50 years old.

With tires weighing about 20 pounds each, that’s about 4,000 pounds of chemical-leaching waste removed from the river.

One cause is the complication and expense of proper disposal of tires, which can’t be simply thrown away or tossed in landfills. The watershed association will work with Westmoreland Cleanways and Recycling to cover appropriate disposition of the tires.

Lance: To uncertain impact. Cheswick residents know what it’s like to live near a power plant. The former Cheswick Generating Station is not in the borough; it is just over the border in neighboring Springdale.

What Cheswick doesn’t know is what it will be like to live next door to a data center. That is the intended future for the demolished station site.

On Wednesday, residents brought concerns to an informational meeting. Those concerns included questions about noise and traffic.

According to Cheswick Council President Brad Yaksich, the maximum decibel level of the center during the day would be under 70 decibels. At night, it would be 60 decibels. For context, 60 decibels is about the level of an air conditioner.

However, Brian Regli, consultant for developer Allegheny DC Property Co., said that when backup generators are in use or being tested, that could go up to something more like a loud lawn mower.

On the one hand, kudos to Regli for not just letting the lower numbers noted by Yaksich stand. On the other, how often could Cheswick expect the louder generators to be in use?

Then there is the increase in traffic on Duquesne Avenue, which would be dealing with transportation for 80 to 100 employees at the site. Again, Regli pointed to some occasional spikes, with higher traffic during construction.

“If I were to tell you this had no impact, I would have no credibility,” he said. “The question is: Are the benefits in excess of the costs?”

That’s why people are asking. They want to know if what they are getting is worth what they will be paying — especially as the cost is one that changes how they will be living in Cheswick going forward.

The real question is this: How accurate are the answers?