In May, newly drafted Pittsburgh Steelers offensive guard Gennings Dunker amused Pittsburgh residents , asking whether it was OK to swim in the rivers or eat the fish he planned to catch.
The live reaction – surprise, laughter and more than a little uncertainty about the right answer – revealed something the encounters regularly in its public outreach: Many Pittsburghers aren’t sure whether their rivers are safe.
Pennsylvanians have invested over the past four years to restore the Chesapeake Bay’s watershed quality and ecosystem health. Up north, to keep the Great Lakes intact.
Pennsylvania residents to fishable, swimmable waterways – a standard the rivers of Pittsburgh have not always met.
As an , I study how human activity reshapes waterways and urban landscapes. My field work with the Pittsburgh Water Collaboratory tracks changes in the city’s streams and rivers over time.
The 3 rivers are improving
Fifty years ago, a caught all of the fish in the Braddock Locks, one of the nine organizational structures of the Monongahela River, and found a single fish. One fish.
In 2010, , over 23,000 fish, including 32 different species, were found.
That recovery is significant, though alone don’t determine whether a river is safe for swimming.
“ are a technical designation decided by regulators – primarily the Environmental Protection Agency and Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection – who above which swimming poses a meaningful health risk. Below those thresholds, a body of water is considered safe – though individuals still make their own calculations.
Pittsburgh’s rivers are a challenge
Dunker in Iowa City, so the Iowa River offers a useful comparison. It has its own water quality problems, including dissolved nitrogen from . But in this case, nitrogen is primarily a concern if you’re drinking the water, not swimming in it.
Whether a river is officially “swimmable” and whether you want to swim in it are two different questions.
Pittsburgh’s situation is more complicated, and it comes down to sewage.
The city has inherited hundreds of sewer overflow points throughout the city’s three rivers – . There are hundreds of points in the sewer network where heavy rain pushes a directly into the water. The Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, or , is the regional sanitary authority. It says overflows can occur with as little as .
The potential for exposure to raw sewage makes rivers in the ALCOSAN service area unswimmable for at least 48 hours after rainstorms. The consequences of this are historically well documented.
, a city councilor promoting the Pittsburgh Triathlon had to swap the swim leg for a bike leg after an overflow. , triathlon racers reportedly fell ill after competing following a storm. triathlon became a “duathlon” – the swimming portion was canceled entirely.
with orange flags at key points along the rivers. Swimming during these periods carries a meaningful risk of raw sewage exposure. For more precise information, , a nonprofit that helps protect and restore the water quality of the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio rivers and their surrounding watersheds, weekly each summer as part of its Swim Guide program.
Ultimately, ALCOSAN is working toward , though their planning horizon for these efforts stretches to 2046.
Even if Dunker retires as a beloved Steeler, the rivers at that point will likely still be unswimmable after rainstorms.
When is it safe to swim?
Even during dry stretches, Pittsburgh’s rivers carry the legacy of their industrial past.
Abandoned coal mines and slag piles – mountains of waste left over from steel, mining and coal operations – continue to to southwestern Pennsylvania waters. And like nitrogen, their risks to a swimmer aren’t well understood. People are left making a personal call without much guidance.
Fishing has clearer direction. Pennsylvania issues on how much fish you can safely eat from a given stretch of river. These advisories account for that lingering contamination.
Dunker’s enthusiasm for the possibility of fishable, swimmable rivers shows us what could be.
Those who have lived in Pittsburgh for years have witnessed incidents, including and , that invite skepticism about river safety. But as we witness the city’s rivers steadily improve, some of us wonder whether they indeed will be fishable and swimmable in the near future.
The march toward cleaner, healthier rivers continues, and I believe joyous optimism like Dunker’s fuels this progress. But until we get there, Pittsburghers will all experience periods where we cannot freely fish or swim in the rivers that define the city.
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