Pittsburgh begins string of landslide projects totaling $8M
The city of Pittsburgh began construction Monday on a nearly $1 million, 40-foot-tall by 120-foot-wide retaining wall in a landslide-ridden part of the North Side.
It’s just one of 20 active slide locations that the city is currently monitoring and that could affect public rights of way.
The hillside above Diana Street in the city’s Spring Hill neighborhood slid onto the roadway in February 2018 and has continued to move, causing a section of the street to be closed.
No structures had to be evacuated after the slide, but the city’s $900,000 investment in remediating Diana Street is just one of the “early ones” in a string of planned landslide projects after 2018’s record rainfall caused problems for the region.
“These are large and small slide activity zones,” said Karina Ricks, director of the city’s Department of Mobility and Infrastructure. “The large ones
where we expect significant capital construction projects, we have more than half a dozen in design right now.”
The city plans to spend $8 million this year on those construction projects.
The region saw several landslides and wet-weather related calamities in 2018, all of which were fueled by a record amount of precipitation that was nearly 50 percent higher than normal. The Pittsburgh area logged 57.83 inches, according to the National Weather Service in Moon.
The city estimates the total cost of the landslides at upward of $12 million — more than the city can afford to fix this year.
“We do have a number of streets that are closed, that will remain closed, where we do not have programmed funds to remediate those slides at this time,” Ms. Ricks said.
Ms. Ricks said she didn’t have an exact number of streets that remain closed, but one example is Gershon Street in Spring Hill, where residents do not have vehicular access to their properties.
A number of other current landslide zones are within the city limits, Ms. Ricks said, including several on private property. Those include another landslide in Spring Hill that caused the evacuation of six homes and a slide in Allentown affecting three homes along Arlington Avenue.
A week before the Diana Street slide last year, the hillside above Greenleaf Street in Duquesne Heights came falling down, destroying a house.
The city spent $1 million remediating the site on Greenleaf.
According to a city news release Monday, the Diana Street project comes after “extensive analysis and engineering design.”
“If we do leave it unchecked, we fear the slide would continue progressing and eventually affect private properties,” Ms. Ricks said.
Other anticipated remediation sites include List Street in Spring Hill, Forward Avenue in Squirrel Hill and Swinburne Street in South Oakland.
The city’s landslide task force is still hoping to obtain state funding for landslide assistance, Ms. Ricks said.