mile run

if there is hope for redefining the american city’s tenuous relationship with the natural environment, it is being sown here.

By Douglas Root and Grant Oliphant

Scene I: A cool October morning in 1910. Frederick Law Olmsted Jr., the son of the great architect and urban planner who created New York City’s Central Park, is hikingalong the east end of one of Pittsburgh’s environmental gems — the Nine Mile Run

stream system. Flipping his suit jacket over one shoulder, Olmsted nearly runs along its banksout of excitement with what he sees. There is a large entourage of suited men in tow: associates,the director of the city’s park system, and several business leaders. • Olmsted has developed areputation as prominent as his father’s in path-breaking, large-scale architecture. But he also isnationally recognized as a pioneer in the building of urban green spaces, and he has attracted the attention of a group of city leaders led by H. J. Heinz, founder of the H. J. Heinz Co. If the same hike had occurred today, there likely would have been a pack of reporters corralled at a certain point on the route for sound bites and photo opportunities.

Breakdown ofa BrownfieldBetween 1922 and 1972, prime

city green space around the Nine

Mile Run stream became the

dumping ground for the end-stage

waste product of steel production

known as slag. More than 20 mil-

lion tons of the rough, cinder-like

material were dumped in the

area. Now, after two years of

grading and covering with top-

soil, home construction is begin-

ning in the development known

as Summerset at Frick Park.

The stream gets its name not

from its length, but from the

distance between its outlet into

the Monongahela River and

Pittsburgh’s famous Point, where

the Mon joins the Allegheny

River to form the Ohio. Much of

the stream runs underground.

Duck Hollow

MonongahelaRiver

The most visible part of

the 240-acre project site

for motorists is on the

Parkway East at the

entrance to the Squirrel

Hill Tunnel. A new road-

way off of Commercial

Avenue leads to the

housing development.

Largely hidden by dense

vegetation and trees, the

Nine Mile Run stream is

fed by underground pools

and tributaries as it winds

around the slag mountain.

Nine Mile Run’s end-point

into the Monongahela

River is in the tiny city

neighborhood of Duck

Hollow, where ducks,

Canada geese, blue heron,

and other waterfowl feed.

Parkway East

the beginning. While the endof this story has yet to berecorded, there is hard evidencethat the closing chapter will be a transforming story of renewal.

Some 90 years later, as Pittsburgh City Government officialsbegan exploring new uses for the site, The Heinz Endowmentsset out to create the environmental version of a rescue SWATteam to save Nine Mile Run. That team was an eclectic mixheaded by the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry at CarnegieMellon University. It included historians, scientists, engineers,lawyers and policy experts, City of Pittsburgh urban planners,park maintenance work crews, and a housing developer; all are following a master plan to restore the stream and itssurrounding wetlands.

“This is a case where philanthropy is a pioneer and ashaper of the process, not just a funder of some group’s idea,”says Joan Blaustein, manager of special projects in the city’sPlanning Department. In fact, the Nine Mile RunRestoration Project has attracted other funders in addition to The Heinz Endowments. The list includes the RichardKing Mellon Foundation, the Pennsylvania Council on theArts, the Pennsylvania Streamside Forest Fund, and thePittsburgh Children’s Museum. The more success the effortshows, the more the list of partners is expected to grow.

“There couldn’t be more at stake here, in terms of correctingone of the city’s great environmental tragedies,” says CarenGlotfelty, director of The Heinz Endowments’ EnvironmentProgram. In fact, Nine Mile Run was once exactly as Olmsteddescribes it, one of the most pristine stream systems in thestate. Its water was so pure that it was teeming with fish speciesthat never would have survived in the polluted rivers. Its wet-lands once supported one of the most important ecosystemsin western Pennsylvania, including plant and animal life nowgone from the adjoining 600-acre Frick Park.

If the team performs well inbringing Nine Mile Run back to its

former vigor—a very real possibility—the future of oneof the most visually stunning city park systems will be assured.Just as important, a new collaborative model for reclaimingurban brownfields will have been created. “This project hasthe potential to make Pittsburgh one of the most excitingplaces in the country for sustainable development and brown-field redevelopment,” says Andrew McElwaine, formerly ofThe Heinz Endowments and now president and chief execu-tive officer of the Pennsylvania Environmental Council.

In fact, there is a jolt of electricity running through thecity and its eastern border suburbs as a long-lost dream of anew public park is being realized. It’s especially significant for some affected communities that traditionally weren’tconsidered prosperous enough to warrant such amenities.

So the story playing out here is much more than the plotof one stream’s redemption. It is the story of achieving envi-ronmental equity in a community, of charting a new kind ofrelationship between a community and a natural resource longconsidered lost. If there is hope for redefining the Americancity’s tenuous relationship with the natural environment, it isbeing sown here, in a pioneering effort to redirect the channelof Nine Mile Run back to its natural form and function.

Scene II: A sun-drenched June morning in 1999.Ninety years after Olmsted’s hike around Nine MileRun, a convoy of SUVs bumps and grinds its way

over the moonscape of the adjacent land and stops at the edgeof the mountainous slag. Out across the river is a panoramicview of Homestead, a struggling mill-town that has razed itsrusty steel plants at the edge of the Monongahela River and

But this is a differenttime and a differentplace. Early 20th-centuryPittsburgh is a city at fullindustrial throttle. Thenotion of preserving astream system, of takingthe last undeveloped

stretch of city land and designing one more picnic park, is lostamid the smoke from the mills and the cigars in City Hall.

“Nine Mile Run could be the most beautiful of all thecity’s parks,” Olmsted writes in his 1911 Master Plan to turn the 244-acre stretch of land into one of the country’sgreat urban greenspaces, “… the stream, when it is freedfrom sewage, will be an attractive and interesting elementin the landscape; the wooded slopes on either side giveample opportunity for enjoyment of the forest, forshaded walks and cool resting places, and above all, it isnot far from a large working population … and yet it is so excluded by its high, wooded banks that theclose proximity of urban developmentcan hardly be imagined.”

But what Olmsted has advocatedin the plan commissioned by theCity Parks Commission is givenscant coverage by the local pressand ignored by those whocontrol the purse strings. EvenNine Mile Run’s utilitarianfunction as a golf course isconsidered frivolous andeventually abandoned.

Nearly 90 years drift by, with Nine Mile Run’s streamsystem abandoned to overgrowth and overdevelopment. Assuburban communities crowd in around the city, the streambecomes an inconvenient nuisance with its natural patterns of flooding. There are clumsy attempts to redirect its coursewith concrete and brick barriers; there is a mindless networkof crumbling sanitary sewers that leak into the stream and poison everything in the water’s path. On many days,especially after a heavy rain, toilet paper can be seen floatingat the edges of the stream.

But the greatest insult to the stream and adjoining landcomes as the result of the monumental success of steel making

in the region. Between 1922 and 1972, the NineMile Run area is the primary dumping ground

for the end-stage waste product of steelproduction — slag. More than 20 milliontons of the rough, cinder-like material is

trucked to the area, enough to create amountain as high as a 20-story building.

What once was envisioned as the naturalsite for one of the country’s most spectacular

urban parks is now a polluted dumpingground with a creepy desolate moon-scape as a backdrop.

This is the tragic opening of a rags-to-riches environmental story aboutthe fate of one of the largest undevel-oped areas in the city and the onlytributary offering uncluttered accessto the Monongahela, one of tworivers that wrap around Pittsburghto form the Ohio. This is thebeginning of the dark years, whenone of the city’s most beautifulnatural resources was left to festerand decay by people who didn’tknow or didn’t care. But this is only

For decades, slag was dumped in

the Nine Mile Run area at the rate of

250 tons each day — enough to create

a mountain 20 stories high. In the early

years, train cars hauled the industrial

waste. Later, the job was shifted to a

fleet of dump trucks.

The mountain of slag rises over the tiny

community of Duck Hollow in this winter

scene from 1996. This city borough is

tucked around a bend in the Monongahela

River at the mouth of Nine Mile Run stream.

In 1911, H. J. Heinz, founder of the

H. J. Heinz Co., recognized the beauty

of Nine Mile Run and hired one of the

country’s leading urban planners, Frederick

Law Olmsted Jr., to develop a master plan to

preserve it as a park. The proposal was ignored.

Union Address earlier in the year. Under theplan, cities like Pittsburgh would be able toissue nearly $10 million in interest-freebonds to preserve green spaces, clean upbrownfield sites, and purify waterways. ForBrowner, the Nine Mile Run project is theone-stop shop to dramatize all these uses.

This is Browner’s third trip to the Nine Mile Run area, and it’s clear she’s beenkeeping tabs on the project. She points toareas around the site that have been cleanedup since her last trip, and she asks detailedquestions about the status of assessmentstudies of the Nine Mile Run stream’s waterquality. She has been hiking along thestream and knows that the plan calls for itsdonation — a total of 100 acres, includingborder land — to Pittsburgh’s Frick Park.The addition is likely to put it among the top five urban parksin the country.

“What we have here is an opportunity for government to join with the private sector and the universities and thefoundation community to set an example of what can bedone. It’s all here in one place. But just look at what has been accomplished already.”

The mayor steps up to talk about the interdependence ofthe team working to restore the Nine Mile Run area. “Thereis no point in going to the trouble of growing green grass onall this slag, of putting in the sewer and water pipes, andhaving a private developer build wonderful new homes, if theNine Mile Run stream isn’t cleaned up. And there is no pointcleaning up the stream if we don’t turn this mountain of slagback into usable, livable land. Each part of this team mustwork together or we won’t succeed.”

The waterfront beautification under the Homestead HighLevel Bridge, the cleanup of Nine Mile Run stream, and thereclaiming of the slag heap to provide the second new housingproject in Pittsburgh since World War II are all partnership

examples of what University of Pittsburghprofessor Jim DeAngelis calls smartalternatives to “exurban development.”

“These were done by strengthening tiesto growing communities, making a multi-municipal development deal, and usingsome creative public financing,” DeAngelis,of the Graduate School of Public andInternational Affairs, wrote in a recentPittsburgh Post-Gazette essay. “One outcomewould be improving the quality of suburbandevelopment while indirectly encouragingreinvestments in our urban valleys. Makingconnections between greenfield and brown-field investments in a region of contrastslike ours would be living smart.”

The “Smart Growth” and “SustainableDevelopment” principles championed by

public policy and environmental leaders have guided TheHeinz Endowments since its first dip into Nine Mile Run in1997 with a tiny grant to support Carnegie Mellon graduateschool internships. As the project has grown with a continuedsharp focus on these principles, the Endowments’ commitmenthas escalated into a full plunge. More than $1.6 million hasbeen assigned to the stream cleanup effort and the publicprocess behind it.

“What people have to realize is that the Nine Mile Runcleanup project never would have been seriously consideredfor funding without someone worrying about pulling togetherthe politics and the public awareness,” says Eloise Hirsh, thedirector of City Planning who helped create the master planfor the cleanup effort and funding. “We were able to leverageour little project in the context of a much bigger issue thatgroups like the Army Corps of Engineers and private housingdevelopers would have to pay attention to — the sewer systemrenovation involving several municipalities and the issue of awatershed for the entire region.”

replaced them with restaurants, big box stores, and entertain-ment draws. Also on view is the aging Homestead High LevelBridge, which crosses high above the valley and links town to city. A half-mile upriver from its anchor piles is the tinycommunity of Duck Hollow, the entry point for the NineMile Run stream.

The SUVs park to the side of an open-air white tent with yellow trim. It houses a breakfast buffet that will openafter a press conference involving national, state, and localpublic officials.

Stepping quickly out of the second SUV is Carol Browner,former Al Gore aide and director of the EnvironmentalProtection Agency in the Clinton Administration. She is tall,with close-cut dark hair set off against a cream-colored pants

suit. She removes her sunglasses and passes briefing materialsto an aide. “Right on target. Thanks for doing this,” she says,walking briskly to a podium set up outside the tent.

“Don’t you just love this!” she shouts as the city’s mayor,Tom Murphy, several state legislators from the area, and a packof reporters kick up moon dust following her up the grade tothe podium. “This is my absolute favorite brownfield site,”she says, mindful of the press around her. “What is going onhere is nothing short of groundbreaking in brownfieldrestoration and in restoring green space. When this is completed,it will be the poster project for sustainable development.”

Browner is using the Nine Mile Run area as the backdropfor a plea for public support of “Better America Bonds,” aprogram unveiled by President Clinton in his State of the

Indeed, it would be difficult to find a more dramaticexample of man’s attempt to trample the natural environment than the engineering record of NineMile Run.

A series of concrete beds, artificial banks,

flow control dams, and a network of sewer

pipes have wreaked havoc with the waterway’s

natural ecosystem.

Nine Mile Run had become a virtual moonscape

by the time the idea of reinventing it as a park

resurfaced in the early 1990s. “If we can do this

here, we can do it anywhere,” then Environmental

Protection Agency head Carol Browner said on a

visit last year.

The former planning director,who continues to assist the mayorand others on land use issues, saysgovernment–nonprofit partner-ships like that developed betweenJohn Schombert of 3 Rivers WetWeather Demonstration Project andState Senator Jay Costa to set stateregulations for repairing antiquatedsewer systems, helped convince theCorps that a $5 million investmentin stream cleanup would be worth-while. “Particularly helpful, too, isthe role of the Endowments in thelater stages of this project, wherefunding is going into the processthat will move it along,” says Hirsh. “People notice when afoundation takes an active interest in the outcome, and ithelps build more support.”

Places like Nine Mile Run can be found in almost everycommunity in America, even in the post-industrial cities bur-geoning in the modern South and West. But Pittsburgh’s urbanstream is one of the more extreme examples of Brownfield,USA — the catchall category for land tracts that have beenoverused and abused in the country’s embrace of industry. Itis the legacy of what Tim Collins, Greenway Project co-directorat Carnegie Mellon University’s STUDIO for Creative Inquiry,calls the industrial era’s notion of “The Commons.”

Under this concept, nature’s primary function is to serve as infrastructure. Valleys and flood plains provide pathways forroads, train tracks, and sewer pipes. Its waters are a means oftransport and disposal or, just as often, barriers to be overcome.Its flora and fauna have no practical benefit, but they do haveoccasional value as an aesthetic decoration around concrete,brick, and steel.

“The Commons” has been part of an American gospel ofgrowth that preaches human dominance over the naturalworld. It is a belief structure that most urban planners and

environmentalists have skeweredrepeatedly; it is so riddled withfalse assumptions, they charge,that the list of man’s misjudgmentof the natural environment wouldfill up a big city library. Indeed, it would be difficult to find amore dramatic example of man’sattempt to trample the naturalenvironment than the engineeringrecord of Nine Mile Run.

The stream is born in variousplaces beneath the municipalitiesof Edgewood, Swissvale, andWilkinsburg. It emerges at a pointjust east of Pittsburgh’s grand

Frick Park and flows through a steep, wooded valley thatstretches in a 1.8-mile crescent south through the city downto the Monongahela River.

Early in the 20th century, not one but two august panels of city elders recommended that Pittsburgh acquire Nine MileRun and preserve it as a park. But city leadership failed to act.Unhappy at having to maintain the parks it already had, thecity regarded open space as wasted space. Plans to acquireNine Mile Run were permanently shelved, and the impulse topreserve the stream yielded to three much baser impulses: tocontain it, to exploit it, and, ultimately, to reject it.

The effort to contain Nine Mile Run is evident everywherealong the stream’s length. It has been stretched and dug outand relined so much over the years that the natural stream isno more. What remains is a storm water channel, the mostefficient method for moving water from point A to point B.Plant and animal life sustained by the waterway is secondaryto infrastructure goals.

Natural conduits — open-air streams — are notoriouslyinefficient from a developer’s point of view. Such meanderingwaterways take up space better used for roads and building.They flood in inopportune places.

A century’s worth of engineers knew how to fix suchirksome problems: culverts, and lots of them, and channelstraightening efforts to rid the stream of all those loops and bends.

The result today is a waterway that is mostly hidden frompublic view. Nine Mile Run derives its name not from itslength but from the distance between its outlet and Pittsburgh’sfabled Point, where the Monongahela joins the Allegheny toform the Ohio. Still, the stream’s two miles of open flow areprobably complemented by at least seven miles of feeders andtributaries forever contained in culverts beneath its upstreamcommunities.

When that water finally does emerge and pour into NineMile Run, it is sharply rerouted through a series of concretebeds, artificial banks, retaining walls, and flow-control dams.

a speeding freight train. In a cheap attempt to stem the flow,three refrigerator-sized blocks of concrete were wedged in atthe mouth of the main culvert. Today, only two remain; thethird was swept up like a toy boat in the first heavy rain andcarried hundreds of yards downstream. There it remains as a monument to the notion of The Commons, to the processof one poorly thought-out scheme to fix another.

S cene III: Flashes of deep purple, turquoise, and limegreen dot a patch of wildflowers in a nook of NineMile Run as a hummingbird flits and floats in a

search for sweet nectar. Clumps of wild grapes hang heavy offtheir vine. Yellow jewelweed dots a hill of freshly moundedearth near the site that will become the upscale housing development known as Summerset at Frick Park.

Researchers place artists with engineers and othertechnology–based professionals to help better definethe park-stream project to groups ranging fromPittsburgh City Council members to elementaryschool students.

Pennsylvania State University researchers survey the fish population

of Nine Mile Run. Their work shows significant gaps in the fish food

chain — especially among higher-level species like bass and trout that

are most sensitive to polluted waters. Out of as many as 35 species

of fish that should be thriving in the stream, the investigative team

identified only two.

Pennsylvania Department of Transportation engineers oncedynamited a cliff above the stream to make a new channel.The wreckage from such engineering tinkering is everywherealong the stream’s course.

There are the vestiges of artificial banks, walls, and damsthat crumbled faster than they could be completed. Always,the stream manages to find its own way. Stripped of itsoriginal meandering course and its flood plains, it cuts deeplyand causes severe erosion into vegetated hillsides.

Upstream, the culverts direct the water, but they do it toowell. Just minutes after a heavy rain, torrents of water shootthrough the valley with such force that the noise sounds like

In another section of the stream’s run, in a grassy hollow at the lower end of Frick Park, there is an adjoining, neatlygroomed ball field protected by towering trees. The edge ofthe outfield is so close to the water that gurgling can be heardon days when the park isn’t filled with shouting ballplayers.But an ominous boundary line marks the line between fieldand stream bank — a series of metal signs placed by theAllegheny County Health Department: “Caution. Waterunsafe for drinking and recreation.”

It is at this bluntly marked intersection of bucolic greenway,polluted waterway, and popular parkland that The HeinzEndowments’ work has been focused. Environment Programofficers have developed a strong relationship with researchersin the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry. There, researchers place artists with engineers and other technology-basedprofessionals to help better define the park–stream project to groups ranging from Pittsburgh City Council members

to elementary school students. STUDIO artists, for instance, helped

spur critically important communitydiscussion on whether Nine Mile Run,

with its planned adjacent housingdevelopment, should be people-centered or people-accessible. In one

exercise that drew a lot of media attention,STUDIO plotted out the path of the buried

part of Nine Mile Run through nearly two miles of thecity and marked it with gold spray paint, evoking the gold leaf framing of masterworks of art.

STUDIO Greenway Project co-director Collins describesthe exercise as a process to create dialogue. “Our product is discourse, and we succeeded in getting a lot of people

talking.” His wife and colleague at Carnegie Mellon, ReikoGoto, says that people began to talk about the stream and thepark in the context of their home environments, telling storiesto children and grandchildren. “The dialogue itself we call art.It’s a different way of understanding what is art.”

At the other extreme of the STUDIO Greenway project,Heinz Endowments’ funding has put muscle into more science-based assessments that will lead to better environmen-tal stewardship in the park, develop a model for urban openspace development, find effective communication methods for getting public buy-in to support environmental projects,and promote biodiversity in brownfield reclamation.

In dealing with the government sector, the reclamationteam has found willing partners in quarters traditionally averse to complex land reclamation efforts.

Pittsburgh’s Mayor Murphy, likely to win a third four-yearterm, has been relentless in his effort to attract companies and residents to a city still bound up in a decades-old imageof a smoke-clogged and polluted steel town. The steel making is long gone and the city now has an economy fueledby service industries and knowledge workers — medicalresearch, software development, and other forms of high-technology industry.

Among the vegetation reintroduced to the Nine Mile Run site are, from left,

Staghorn Sumac, various wildflowers, and the V Hop-tree. Hop-trees are not native

to the site, but they have been discovered growing around the slag area. Since

they are on the threatened species list in Pennsylvania, environmentalists want

to encourage their growth here.

The Other Residents of Nine Mile Run

T he $8 million first phase

of the plan to turn

Pittsburgh’s Nine Mile

Run from open sewer into inviting

waterway begins this spring.

Among the many people who will

benefit — hikers, park lovers,

nearby residents, city officials,

and university researchers —

perhaps none is more surprising

than local fishermen.

In fact, the prospect of city

workers racing out of their down-

town office towers at quitting time

and driving only eight miles to

enjoy some of the best bass fishing

in the

state is a

staple of Mayor Tom Murphy’s cheer-

leading speech for the project.

He offers the tantalizing image of

anglers in waist-boots picking

favorite spots along the stream’s

course, easing their lines into quiet

backwater pools, or dunking their

lines in the gurgling main channel.

“It’s like something from A

River Runs Through It, but it’s all

happening inside the city limits,”

Murphy says to his wide-eyed and

smiling audiences.

Far-fetched? Not according to

the Army Corps of Engineers, which

has included stocking the stream

with bass and trout as the final

phase of the Nine Mile Run recla-

mation project. It would be an ideal

way to validate the water purity of

a stream that currently is the

repository for sewage from

three bordering municipalities —

Edgewood, Swissvale, and

Wilkinsburg. The communities are

currently working to fix their

sewer systems to prevent storm

water overflow from carrying

human waste into the stream.

Decades of leaking sewers and

misguided attempts to straighten

and control Nine Mile Run’s natural

flow wreaked havoc with plant

and animal life on the banks of the

stream. The polluted water and

disruption of delicate food

chains caused many fish species

to disappear from the stream.

A recent study of fish species

in Nine Mile Run by Pennsylvania

State University researchers Jay

Stauffer and Timothy Stecko found

severe underpopulation of hardy

fish and serious gaps in the plants,

insects, and fish that make up the

stream’s food chain. “We would

expect a clean stream of this size

that empties directly into the

Monongahela to support 20 to 35

[fish] species at any one time,” the

researchers wrote in their report.

“However, the Nine Mile Run

ecosystem only supports a fraction

of healthy diversity . . . two fish

species [the white sucker and the

creek chub].”

But Joan Blaustein, manager

of special projects for the Depart-

ment of City Planning, says that,

if every stakeholder in the project

does its part, much of the fish life

that existed in the stream 100 years

ago can be restored. Most crucial

are the sewer system repairs and

the Army Corps’ work to return

about 1,000 feet of the stream

channel to its natural configuration.

“Some local dogs and kids who

play soccer may not be thrilled,

but the engineers also will be

reintroducing a flood plain to handle

the natural overflow,” she said. The

project also calls for 100 acres

that make up the expanded stream

ecosystem to be added to Frick

Park, one of the city’s

most popular recre-

ational spots.

Stauffer

and Stecko

reported that a

cleaned-up Nine

Mile Run would be able

to support a wide range of fish

species, including aquatic vegeta-

tion feeders like minnow, redhorse,

and quillback; scavengers such as

bullhead and channel catfish; and

predator fish common in the

Monongahela such as smallmouth

bass, bluegill, and several types of

sunfish. “There is no doubt that if

the water quality in Nine Mile Run

substantially improved, many fish

species would begin to use this

system as a breeding area, leading

fish diversity to increase rapidly,”

the researchers reported.

Summerset at Frick Park is only

the second new home construc-

tion project in the city since the

end of World War II. The 713-unit

development has been designed

according to “New Urbanism”

principles, which include laying

out houses with space for alleys

and sidewalks that lead to

useful places like a business

district and a park.

The Master Plan

Artists have had a significant

role in the Nine Mile Run project,

designing works for practical

and aesthetic purposes. Here,

Douglas Hollis leans against

one of his “Listening Vessels,”

which would use acoustic

amplification materials to focus

hikers and other park visitors

on natural sounds.

At the stream’s beginning point

on Braddock Avenue (off map),

a series of strategically placed

natural rock formations will slow

down the flow of storm water

after heavy rains.

Nine Mile Run empties into the

Monongahela River here at Duck

Hollow, where the master plan calls

for educational and cultural attrac-

tions to be built into the site so that

residents and visitors will appreciate

the benefits of the stream and slag

reclamation efforts. Among the

amenities: a picnic area and fishing

platform, a butterfly garden, bird-

nesting structures, including a

duck blind, and a fish ladder for

upstream migration.

This artist’s rendering shows

a proposed pavilion next to a

pedestrian bridge and near

residential homes. It would be

made out of natural materials

to enhance the environmental

experience for children and

others who would meet for

lectures or exhibitions.

A Primer for Brownfield and Stream Clean Up: The Master Plan for Nine Mile Run calls

for restoration along five specific sections, or nodes, of the stream and its environs.

These consist of: Node 1 at Braddock Avenue: Restore the city’s cultural relationship with

a “lost” stream and promote sustainable growth of urban ecosystems. Node 2 at Frick Park: Restore the

flood plain, separate the stream from community sewer systems, reestablish riparian vegetation, reduce

water flow. Node 3 at Commercial Avenue: Establish a greenway continuity with Frick Park and restore a

native meadow. Node 4 at the Slag Corridor and Bridge Crossing: Restore the integrity of the site

through a mix of ecological and cultural processes. Node 5

at Duck Hollow: Restore Nine Mile Run’s riparian ecosystem

and provide for hiking, boating, and stream exploration.

Monongahela River

A centerpiece of the mayor’s strategy to attract and holdthese younger professionals is to create a city that exudesbeauty and a high quality of natural amenities, including apatchwork of welcoming green spaces. He has called for anexpansion of the city park system, demanded that chiefexecutive officers include parklets with new office towers, andhas directed his own Public Works Department to continue

own Planning Department. The project could have degeneratedinto hardened positions and a long stall in implementing amaster plan. But thanks to a mix of data-gathering and publicpressure, city officials bought into a master plan that called forsaving all of Nine Mile Run.

“This process engaged people who have a basic mistrust of government in all forms,” says City Planning Department

“What we have here is the perfect result of teamwork.We are taking two environmentally degraded tracts of land [the Nine Mile Run stream and the slagmountain] and bringing them back for people and for nature.”

building beyond the 13 miles of biking and running trailsalong the riverfronts and through the middle of downtown.

It was Murphy’s administration, searching for ways toexpand the city’s tax base and to lure families inside city gates,that hit on the idea of building new housing atop the slag of Nine Mile Run. At the end of 1994, his first year in office,the city purchased the property with a grand plan to createhomes as attractive as those in the adjacent, upscale Squirrel Hill neighborhood.

In order to ensure a willing supply of homebuyers, the slag mountain would have to be dug out and graded. Topsoilwould have to be trucked in by the ton to support green plantlife. About 100 acres of the reclaimed land would be added to Frick Park. But there was a learning curve involved in the way city officials wanted to address the sewage-infested middlesection of Nine Mile Run.

They wanted to bury it and turn it into a landscaped park.That quick-fix solution was rejected by environmental groups,STUDIO team members, and even by members of the city’s

manager Blaustein. “It brought them to the table, gave them a voice, and, as a result, the public continues to be involved to this day.”

The collaboration also drew from circles outside the city,taking in the boroughs and townships whose sewer systemsare the source of the stream’s pollution. It moved from thereto state government and the city’s congressional delegation,which worked to create a $7.7 million restoration plan —$5 million through the Army Corps of Engineers, $2 millionfrom Pennsylvania’s Growing Greener program, and theremaining amount from local sources. The Corps also agreedto adjust its standard engineering practices to fit in with the team’s master plan.

The opening of dialogue with Pittsburgh’s Water and Sewer Authority and the boroughs and townships around theNine Mile Run area has, for the first time, found agreementthat any sewer system renovation needs to take in the naturalwetlands that are fed by Nine Mile Run stream. Nine Mile

Run is the flagship project for the new 3 Rivers Wet Weatherprogram, which seeks to develop affordable, sustainablealternatives to our region’s water quality crisis.

In fact, the Endowments’ early involvement in saving NineMile Run has helped speed up the dialogue on a regionalenvironmental problem that dwarfs the stream system’s ills. It’s a mind-boggling issue of how to restore a dilapidatedsewer network that takes in dozens of municipalities in theAllegheny County Sanitary Authority system. While theauthority is facing a court order to clean up the system, theprice tag stands at an eye-popping $3 billion.

While it’s impossible for the network to pay even a portionof that cost, the collaborative effort for Nine Mile Run pointsto success in a plan that allows for system renovation in small increments, in harmony with the natural environment.Eventually, all the parts come together under a master planthat has public acceptance.

F inal Scene: A sunny but brisk February morning thisyear. Longtime Regent Square residents Jim and KathyWoll are with their three children in the Weinberg

Village Community Center in Squirrel Hill, just over a hillfrom the slag tundra that will soon be growing green: exoticplants, carpets of grass, and environmentally friendly housing.The mountain has long since been cut down, gently graded,and covered with tons of topsoil. Lots have been staked out,and now there are more willing buyers than land, so it hasbecome a numbers game.

If there is a moment of validation for the worth of teampartnerships and community involvement in solving environ-mental problems, it is here with the Wolls. They are among100 families gathered at the center as players in a lottery that will determine lot choices in the 52-home first phase of building, the beginning of Summerset at Frick Park.

As Mayor Murphy picks the first three numbers from agold-glittered bin, officials of The Rubinoff Company beam.

They know that demonstrations of such public confidencewill help sales of the remaining two phases of homebuilding.In total, 713 homes are planned, ranging in price from$180,000 for two-bedroom townhouses to $700,000 for four- and five-bedroom luxury homes with four-star views.

“We never would have had this kind of interest if therehadn’t been a plan for the Nine Mile Run stream cleanup,”says Rubinoff president, Mark Schneider. “What we have here is the perfect result of teamwork. We are taking twoenvironmentally degraded tracts of land [the Nine Mile Runstream and the slag mountain] and bringing them back forpeople and for nature.”

The Wolls, who already live a short walk from Frick Park,want to continue to have that option, but they’ve outgrowntheir home. They’ve come out fairly well in the lottery. “Notour first choice but a good location,” says Jim, a top executivewith Respironics, a high-tech medical and safety equipmentmanufacturer based in Forest Hills.

“It feels great being part of a new neighborhood that hasbeen so good for the environment,” says Kathy. “How manypeople can say they live in a great house inside the city andnext door to reclaimed wilderness? It’s everything in oneneighborhood.” h

Photo Credits

Page 5: Charles Uhl

Page 6: STUDIO for Creative Inquiry

Page 6: Heinz Family Archives

Page 7: U.S. Bureau of Mines

Page 8: William L. Black and

University of Pittsburgh

Page 10: STUDIO for Creative Inquiry

Page 13: STUDIO for Creative Inquiry

Pages 14 – 15: Urban Design Associates, Cooper

Robertson Partners, La Quatra Bonci Associates,

Rocky Mountain Institute, STUDIO for Creative

Inquiry, Douglas Hollis, and Charles Uhl