Allegheny Cleanways, Rick Duncan, EarthRise-GIS, LLC, and John Stephen, Living Waters of Pittsburgh, are convened the Third Annual Girty’s Run Watershed Citizen’s Summit on January 15 on projects and strategies for the improvement of Girty’s Run.

The first two summits led to a citizen’s led visual assessment of the main stem of Girty’s Run funded by the Laurel Foundation.  A watershed mini grant from the Dominion Foundation, administered by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy provided funding to compile and showcase the findings.

Myrna Newman of Allegheny Cleanways and Rick Duncan of EarthRise-GIS, LLC  provided a report on the initial results.

The Summit featured other reports on ongoing stormwater management and stream improvement work within the watershed. These reports are a representative sample of public and private watershed-based efforts and the Citizen’s Summit is the one opportunity for advocates to consider watershed needs comprehensively.

The Summit included brief talks by:

-- Myrna Newman (Allegheny Cleanways) and Rick Duncan (Earthrise-GIS, LLC) – Rapid Citizen’s Assessment of the Main Stem;

-- Art Gazdik (Groundwork Civil) – Monitoring of the Hawthorne Street bioSwale

-- Matt Graham (Landbase Systems Corp.) – Modeling Distributed Stormwater Management Infrastructure in Millvale;

-- Students from Chatham University Falk School of Sustainability – Food Forest and Park-Ride dePave proposals for Millvale Borough;

-- Brian Wolovich (Millvale Borough and Millvale Community Library) – Rainwater Capture at the Library and the Millvale PiVot EcoDistrict Initiative.

Internationally renowned environmental artist Betsy Damon was a special guest and provided some insight from her perspective. Ms. Damon is founder of Keepers of the Water and a Team Member in the Living Waters of Larimer project.

For more information, visit the Girty’s Run Watershed Citizen’s Summit webpage.

1/16/2015