In Pittsburgh, Our infrastructure is falling apart because of poor watershed management, and lack of maintenance. As a result, our hillsides are collapsing and bringing bridges, houses and roadway with them. That's what the emergency is, a Federal disaster declaration literally because our aging infrastructure is eroding, collapsing and washing out.
A lack of consideration for watershed management and deteriorating drainage infrastructure is at the heart of this problem, heavy rains cause floods and landslides, as well as abandoned mine blow-outs and combined sewage overflows that kill entire streams and poison our rivers on a regular basis.
Terraced wooded hillsides, rain gardens, rainwater retention ponds, and constructed wetlands would mitigate the flooding and combined sewage problems, as well as stabilize the land-slide prone hillsides.
Take the concept to the level of a fully functional food forest, and implement this on a city-wide scale and we could fix this situation by making the
city even better than it was before.
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