Westmoreland Conservancy News

The following is a report on the conservation bus tour by the Westmoreland County Conservation District on April 30, by Dick Byers.

This was primarily a tour of sedimentation and storm water control of planned developments. The first stop was the Palmer Plan in Latrobe (owned by Arnold Palmer) which was down on an old strip-mine he bought in the 1970's. They used some type of artificial mesh to retain soil erosion from a 30 foot high bank they constructed and several sedimentation ponds that will catch the storm water and drain it slowly into 9-mile run and finally the Loyalhanna Creek.

The 2nd stop was at Victoria Highlands (pictured) which is on a wooded slope. Because of the slope they had a huge catch basin for the sediment. This is a 56 acre site with 56 lots. The developer says people bought the sites for the trees, but by the time he gets the house built, most of the trees will have been removed. A wetlands was disturbed and had to be remediated. A guy from Murrysville on the tour said it was just a mosquito breeding ground anyway. I gave him a dirty look.

Stop 3 was at the Legion-Keener Park in Latrobe where I played as a kid. Didn't recognize the place at all. It was a thick, brushy grown over slag pile from Latrobe Steel when I knew it with a baseball and football field carved out of the dumpsite. A dense invasive plant thicket contained a pond in the slag dump where we used to catch frogs. The site was located right beside the Loyalhanna Creek where the sewage pipes exited and dumped raw sewage. It was a very smelly place in the 1940's and early 50's. Now there are lawns, picnic pavilions and a walking trail. A hired naturalist gives nature programs and has erected kestrel boxes along the walking trail. The old frog pond is still there. Latrobe has a sewage treatment plant and the mine reclamation wetlands at St. Vincent is improving the color of the creek water. This is a successful conservation story. Latrobe has a nice community park there, a bit too manicured for my taste, but there is more bird life there (a positive indicator) and certainly an improvement over what existed before. It is well used.

The last stop after the yummy FREE lunch was at the new Wall-Mart plaza on the brownfield where the old Greengate Mall used to be. The only improvement here I could see was the old mall had no stormwater control whatsoever and all the rain from the buildings and parking lot caused flooding in Jeannette. This development (over 100 acres) has a huge sedimentation and storm water basin to release trapped storm water slowly.

I wasn't wild about all the development, but I learned a lot about sedimentation and stormwater control. If development has to take place, at least it is being planned and executed with the environment in mind.