Bunola boaters concerned about planned dam demolition project along Monongahela River

ALLEGHENY COUNTY, Pa. — A month after a planned dam demolition project along the Monongahela River, boaters in Bunola say they’re concerned about how much the river level has dropped.

“I’ve never seen a river drop this fast, this quickly,” said Rebecca Russell. “And destroy such an amount of somebody’s business.”

Rebecca Russell and Leslie Chevine have been docking their boats at the Carousel Marina for two decades.

“I know we’ve had a lot of dry days, and it’s been incredibly hot, but I grew up on this river, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Russell.

The Carousel Marina is less than four miles from the Elizabeth Locks and Dam. Since mid-July, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District has been demolishing sections of the dam. As part of the project, the Army Corps of Engineers says it dropped the pool by two feet. Boaters feel it’s dropped by five feet at this point.

“We are all stuck,” said Russell.

“We didn’t expect it to be this bad,” said Leslie Chevine.

“We’re sitting in dirt,” said Russell. “These boats are almost in the mud too.”

“You can smell the smell from all this stuff,” said Chevine.

On Tuesday, some of the boaters shared their concerns with the Army Corps of Engineers. Stephen Dine says they expected the shoreline to be visible like this.

“There is a misconception between the difference of dropping two feet and the extension of the shoreline,” said U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pittsburgh District Resident Engineer Stephen Dine. “The horizontal slope of a shoreline into the river channel, it appears there’s more of a pool drop, but we’ve only dropped the pool two feet.”

The Department of Environmental Protection confirms it’s spoken with some parties affected by the project and is working to assist facilities affected by the river level change. The DEP is scheduled to meet with some impacted marina owners next week, including the Carousel Marina, to discuss their needs and options and will prioritize any permitting needs.

Russell and Chevine say they hope the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will work with them to come up with at least a temporary solution so they can get their boats out of the river for the season.

“Every single one of these ramps at all of the marinas in this 18-mile pool is unusable,” said Chevine. “We only have about six weeks to figure this out.”

The Army Corps says it’s planning another pool drop, of one foot, in December.

“We did a study on the Monongahela River and the impacts the project would have on the environment and the ecosystem both below the water and above the water, and how it would affect the shoreline,” said Dine. “We’ve communicated that over the past 30 years. This is similar to what we expected, and we’ve anticipated since the project began in the 1990s.”

Dine says they’re asking for patience right now.

“I would just be cognizant that we’re going to lower the pool another foot which has been planned for the past 30 years and just plan accordingly,” said Dine.

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