“Water Under the Bridge” is a local, human-interest column that was published in the Bridgeville News and a series of newspapers that succeeded it from 1991 through 2019. It has continued as a blog, currently being published on Substack.com.
Its author, John Oyler, is a retired Civil Engineer and University of Pittsburgh professor. His email address is joylerpa@icloud.com.
Water Under the Bridge, Copyright © 2016-2026
Last week’s column on the replacement of the Commercial Street Bridge described an impressive local engineering project; this week we would like to discuss another equally impressive project, the ALCOSAN Combined Sewer Remediation Project. This project has a much broader significance; cleaning up the Ohio River affects millions of people downstream. It is also significant to the folks who will be footing the (estimated!) two billion dollars bill to pay for it – all of us ALCOSAN customers. ALCOSAN is the acronym for the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority, an organization with eighty-three customers – the city of Pittsburgh and eighty-two…
When I learned that PennDOT was going to replace the Commercial Street Bridge, my initial reaction was that somebody had a big problem ahead of him. Located just east of the Squirrel Hill Tunnel on the Parkway East, that location is notorious for traffic jams. The prospect of partially closing down the Parkway for several years to replace this bridge would be a massive headache. Then I learned that a combination of three prominent local organizations – PennDOT; HDR; and Fay, S&B USA Construction– was planning to utilize the Accelerated Bridge Construction concept to reduce the shut-down period to less…
Last week we were treated to a special experience, the opportunity to attend an open rehearsal of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra (PSO), an opportunity made available occasionally to long-time patrons. We have been season ticket subscribers for nearly sixty years (initially in combination with two other families). Beth, Mike, Rachael, and I enthusiastically accepted the offer and showed up at the Heinz Hall stage door on Penn Avenue promptly on time. Camilla Pearce, one of the senior members from Development, welcomed us, gave us visitor passes, and led us backstage into the Garden Plaza. She had to keep encouraging me…
I am back home after my second two-week stint at the Chautauqua Institution. The final week was especially memorable since we had our three children and three of our grandchildren together for the first time in several years. Sara and her daughter Claire flew in from Colorado; John and his daughter Lai An, all the way from China. Beth’s daughter Rachael had arrived the previous week after spending the summer in a workshop in New York. The three granddaughters are an interesting trio, each about to enter a new phase of life. Rachael graduated from Bryn Mawr in the Spring…
After spending a week at Chautauqua focused on the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, I am even more deeply intrigued with the story of their initial conception. The discussions included two associated documents – the Federalist Papers and the Bill of Rights. The consensus of the scholars and historians who discussed the founding of our nation was that these four documents had provided a model for our “Grand Experiment”, the effort to bind together thirteen disparate states into a single republic, founded on the principle (according to Abraham Lincoln) “that government of the people, by the people,…
This summer we are celebrating the two hundred and fiftieth birthday of the United States, based on the assumption that our country was born when the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. We know that this was a momentous occasion and that public readings of that document were held throughout the colonies in the next few months, primarily to encourage public support for the audacious activities of a handful of New England patriots that eventually gained support from their neighbors up and down the Atlantic seaboard. The Declaration clearly documented a major shift in philosophy, from resistance to a…
I celebrated my ninety-fifth birthday at Chautauqua nearly two weeks ago. Jonathan and Marsha Maddy drove up from Franklin to help us celebrate. We had a lovely dinner and a magnificent German chocolate cake. Elizabeth had reminded my friends of the significance of the occasion, and I was inundated with phone calls, emails, text messages, birthday cards, E-cards, and letters. I felt like the Rhinestone Cowboy. One of my favorites was a call from my barber, Ted Evangelista, who reported that he was interested in the mathematical equation necessary to fit ninety-five candles on a circular cake. All told, I…
We have just returned from two memorable weeks at the Chautauqua Institution, Weeks Two and Three of “the Season”. Located on the western shore of LChautauqua, the Institution is a self-contained resort community with a bipolar personality. For forty-three weeks of the year it is a pleasant, quiet village with a population that shrinks during the dead of the New York winter and grows gradually during the Spring. Late in June everything changes and it becomes a bustling beehive of cultural activity for the next nine weeks. It is transformed into a gated community in which even permanent residents are…
The Bridgeville Area Historical Society completed its 2025/2026 program series with an interesting presentation by Richard Murphy dealing with the veterans of World War II who witnessed the horror of the Nazi concentration camps when they were liberated at the end of the war. Mr. Murphy is a resident of Carnegie with a deep commitment to honoring members of “The Greatest Generation” and to keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust. The speaker is a fourth generation Army combat veteran who has spent most of his life in public service. He enlisted in the Army at the age of eighteen…
My dear friend Kevin Abt treated me to another memorable adventure last month. This time our destination was at my suggestion. I have been aware of the historical significance of Hanna’s Town for many years but had never visited the actual site. Currently owned by the Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation Department and operated by the Westmoreland County Historical Society, it is an impressive recreation of a frontier village. The original Hanna’s Town had a significant amount of history crammed into the nine years during which it prospered. Located on Forbes Road, halfway between Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt, it…