Environmental Issues Facing Our Region

Pittsburgh’s Environmental History

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has a strong industrial history, incorporating heavy coal and steel production. In the 1830s, due to cheap coal resources, Pittsburgh was the steam engine capital of the Western hemisphere.  Factories were able to run on coal instead of having to rely entirely on water power.  London novelist, Anthony Trollope, wrote about smoke-covered Pittsburgh, calling it “the blackest place which I ever saw.”

Pittsburgh’s first air quality activists in the 1900s were a civic club called the “Ladies’ Health Protective Association of Pittsburgh.” Although the group was met with declarations that clean air was frivolous and that their true motive was to protect their complexions from the smoke, the group made impressive headway. They partnered with engineers to develop technologies and practices for coal fires to burn more efficiently and cleanly. The civic clubs successfully lobbied for municipal laws banning dense smoke, and by 1916, 75 other cities had adopted similar smoke abatement ordinances (Freese 2016).

Today, Pittsburgh has many environmental nonprofits working to improve environmental issues in the region and beyond.

 Read more about Pittsburgh’s environmental history.

Top Environmental Issues in Pittsburgh

Air Quality

Even with the federal Clean Air Act of 1990 and other measures to minimize air pollution, Pittsburgh still has some of the worst air quality in the nation. According to the American Lung Association, Allegheny County still exceeds federal standards for fine particulate matter (PM) and ground level ozone.

Pittsburgh’s poor outdoor air quality creates significant health burdens, especially in children, as exemplified by Allegheny County’s childhood asthma rate being 11% higher than the national average (Asthma Task Force Report). Asthma rates for children living near significant Pittsburgh air pollution point sources (that include Cheswick Generating Station, Clairton Coke Works, and Edgar Thomson Steel Works) is three times the national average (22.5%) (Gentile et al, 2018 & CDC 2020).

The region’s potential to reduce emissions through cleaner and renewable energy sources that support global climate change and improve the region’s air quality is vast, with cascading positive public health outcomes.

Read more in-depth about Pittsburgh’s air quality from Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP) and The Breathe Project.

Water Pollution

Pittsburgh has a very reliable watershed, which contributes to localized water quantity and quality issues.  As an older city, Pittsburgh has a combined sewage system, meaning that wastewater from household and buildings combine with  stormwater in one pipe to the sewage treatment plant. During heavy rainfall events, the volume of water is too larger for the underground pipes, which are designed to overflow into the three rivers. This problem is often referred to as combined sewer overflow (CSO) and not unique to Pittsburgh, but has been estimated to be around 9 billion gallons per year; recent studies project Pittsburgh’s CSO will increase to 11 to 13.7 billion gallons annually into the local waterways as wet weather events increase due to climate change (Fischbach et al. 2017).

Sewage is directed to a water treatment plant during dry weather. During large storms, stormwater is combined with sewage in the same pipe, and the increased volume overflows straight into nearby waters. (ecoss.org)

Read more about Pittsburgh’s waterways from 3 Rivers Wet Weather, Allegheny CleanWays, Nine Mile Run Watershed Association, and Three Rivers Water Keeper.

Environmental Justice

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines environmental justice as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations, and policies.” Unfortunately, the world we live in is not environmentally just, with many environmental injustices being borne by historically marginalized and under resourced communities.  In the Pittsburgh region, these increased environmental burdens include greater exposure to air pollution, flooding, contaminated land, and inequitable access to adequate temperature control. Climate change and its increased extreme weather events exacerbates the challenges environmental justice communities face, but its solutions can also help curb environmental justice impacts already disproportionately bourne in Pittsburgh’s communities.

Read more about environmental justice in Pittsburgh from the Black Environmental Collective, Fair Shake Environmental Legal Services, and Grounded Strategies.