Bill boosts heritage site funding
Rivers of Steel is among groups that federal natural resources act will help
WASHINGTON — Operators of the Bost Building museum, Explorer riverboat tours and the Carrie Furnaces historic site depend on federal funding in their effort to preserve the remnants of the Pittsburgh region’s industrial past.
The nonprofit Rivers of Steel has nearly reached the limit for money it can receive through the Department of Interior, which funds about 15 percent of its budget. That’s why its president, Augie Carlino, has been in Washington this week with leaders of other national heritage areas to press Congress to lift the funding cap.
Their efforts are working. This week the U.S. Senate, as part of a sweeping natural resources bill, voted to raise the cap from $17 million to $20 million per heritage area for the funding period that runs from 1996 to 2021. The House is expected to follow suit in the coming weeks.
The change comes just in time for Rivers of Steel, which has received $16.74 million so far. The Homestead-based nonprofit, which works to preserve sites important to the region’s once-thriving steel industry, was expecting to receive $664,000 this year but can collect only $258,000 if the cap stays in place.
There are currently 49 national heritage areas across the country, with six more ready to join them when the House votes on the legislation.
U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., sponsored the amendment that raised the cap. His amendment also gave a “national heritage” designation to Susquehanna Heritage in Lancaster and York counties. That designation makes Susquehanna eligible for federal funding, too.
U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., was among eight senators, all Republicans, voting no.
Mr. Toomey would have supported the heritage areas if that portion of the legislation was presented as a standalone bill but
could not vote for the whole package, a spokesman for his office said.
The sweeping legislation also expands eight national parks, permanently authorizes the Land and Water Conservation Fund, restricts mining from land adjacent to national parks, protects national parks in California deserts, establishes a 21st Century Conservation Service Corps for children and veterans to work together to restore public lands, and much more.
The expansion provisions concern Mr. Toomey, who says the government first needs to maintain existing federal property.
“The federal government has a $17.5 billion maintenance backlog on the land it already owns,” his spokesman Bill Jaffee said. “This bill permanently reauthorizes the federal government’s land acquisition authority while ignoring the need to address this backlog and other problems.”
Separate legislation addressing the backlog is working its way through Congress.
Leaders of Rivers of Steel and Susquehanna Heritage had been hoping for Mr. Toomey’s support.
“This has some really good things for Pennsylvania, so I’m very disappointed he couldn’t support it,” said Mark Platts, president of Susquehanna Heritage, who has spent the last decade seeking federal designation as a historic area.
“The designation allows you to use the National Parks arrowhead [logo] and to work with National Parks technical staff for assistance on products. It brings the panache of being a national destination,” and that will hopefully draw more visitors to the region, he said.
Mr. Platts said 10 million people visit Lancaster and York counties. If improvements to heritage attractions entice those visitors to stay an extra day, he figures they would spend an estimated $100 million a year — money that would help the region economically.
Federal designation attracts money to heritage regions another way, too, Mr. Carlino said. Potential private donors are more likely to contribute when initiatives have federal backing, he said.
“The whole goal of this is to find ways to invest money in old struggling industrial communities to help them revitalize using heritage and history as the building blocks,” he said.
Mr. Carlino began leading the effort in 1990 through the Mon Valley Initiative in Homestead, which later formed Rivers of Steel as a separate entity with a $40,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation. Back then it was hard to find support, he said.
“The mindset in the late ‘80s was that anything related to industrial Pittsburgh was a detriment to the region being able to rebuild itself. What we showed people was that those are assets if you can use them right. We didn’t want these things to be torn down so we looked for constructive ways to reuse them,” he said.
Now Rivers of Steel preserves and supports numerous historic sites and programs throughout the region, including the 38-acre Homestead Works site, where it plans to develop an urban park with walkways around the towering Carrie Furnaces. The Pump House on the site is where steel workers and bosses clashed violently in 1892 during a violent lockout that temporarily ended union activity in the industry.
For more information: www.RiversOfSteel.com and www.SusquehannaHeritage.org.