TM(Advertisement)
Tube City Community Media Inc. is seeking freelance writers to help cover city council, news and feature stories in McKeesport, Duquesne, White Oak and the neighboring communities. High school and college students seeking work experience are encouraged to apply; we are willing to work with students who need credit toward class assignments. Please send cover letter, resume, two writing samples and the name of a reference (an employer, supervisor, teacher, etc. -- not a relative) to tubecitytiger@gmail.com.
Ads start at $1 per day, minimum seven days.
E. McKeesport Council OK’s Ice Plant Hill Fix
Project designed to fix drainage issue near Wilmerding Community Center
By T.J. Martin
The Tube City Almanac
February 11, 2024
Posted in: East McKeesport News
(T.J Martin photo for Tube City Almanac)
East McKeesport Borough has awarded a bid for a project to help alleviate a stormwater runoff issue and part of the project will utilize drainage pipes that the borough didn’t previously know existed.
The borough council voted unanimously to accept a bid of $249,633 from Cranberry Twp.-based State Pipe Services Inc. for the Ice Plant Hill Remediation Project. The project will be financed by three grants the borough has received.
Borough Engineer Laura Branthoover of Glenn Engineering & Associates said rainwater runs off the hillside bordering Ice Plant Hill and into the parking lot of the Wilmerding Community Center at the base of the hill.
The project will seek to have the water instead flow into a drainage system and involves unblocking existing drainage lines including one under the community center parking lot, clearing existing inlets along the two-lane Ice Plant Hill and installing some new inlets.
Branthoover said in preparing for the project, existing piping in the hillside from an unknown source was discovered. It wasn’t tied into the current drainage system correctly, however, so the project will tie in those existing lines.
The project also includes patching any portion of the community center parking lot that is disturbed but not repaving the entire lot, Branthoover said.
This is the first phase of the remediation project, she said. The work involved in the second phase will depend upon the results of the first phase.
In other action, Council President John Ekiert said the borough police department is now down to three vehicles after a recent accident put one out of commission.
Ekiert said the 2017 Ford Explorer was recently traveling to an accident scene with its lights and siren activated when it was broadsided. There were no injuries but the vehicle was totaled.
Any insurance payment will be lessened due to the age of the vehicle and the borough doesn’t have the money in its budget to purchase a replacement, Ekiert said.
T.J. Martin is a freelance writer from Trafford whose work has also appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and Irwin Standard Observer.
Originally published February 11, 2024.
In other news:
"Glass Recycling Progr…" || "End of an Era: Laught…"