Banksville, West End tangling with fallout from floods

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Nearly a month after extraordinary rainfall stranded motorists and swamped basements across Allegheny County, parts of south and west Pittsburgh are still wading through the fallout.

Dramatic thunderstorms June 20 damaged retaining walls along Saw Mill Run in the West End and overwhelmed drainage systems in Banksville, flooding several homes in each neighborhood. As the Army Corps of Engineers explores a fix for the walls, the Pittsburgh Water and Sewer Authority is assessing what happened in Banksville, where stormwater overran a $1.74 million “green infrastructure” project.

“We shouldn’t have to live like this,” said Bernadette Hughes, 56, of Hayson Avenue. About five feet of water rushed into her garage and basement, leaving behind about $20,000 in damage, she said.

She doesn’t have flood insurance in part because the house isn’t “anywhere near water,” Ms. Hughes said. She estimated that a half-dozen other houses in her section of Banksville — near Hayson Avenue and Red Oak Drive — flooded amid the intense storms, which dropped close to 4 inches of rain in some spots.

Some of those homes hadn’t endured flooding in the past, while others were deluged more severely this time around, Ms. Hughes said. Around them sits the green-infrastructure project, the first PWSA effort of its type to manage stormwater in a residential area. It began taking shape in 2016, relying on landscaped drainage features, underground storage and slow-release systems.

The general concept is to better control flooding hazards and diminish dependence on traditional “gray infrastructure,” such as overtaxed storm sewers that lead to waterways. But only after the green infrastructure arrived did flooding materialize at Ms. Hughes’ home, which had gone flood-free for at least a couple of decades, she said.

“Nobody can appreciate it until they’re a victim of it or until they see it first-hand,” said neighbor Tim Nutter, 51, who said his home had experienced flooding before PWSA built the green infrastructure. Water levels reach higher in his home with each flood, approaching five feet in his basement in the June one, he said, adding that he believes the green infrastructure set-up has failed.

At the PWSA, interim