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The office of Councilwoman Darlene Harris posted a number of documents relating to Duquesne Light’s plan to build a cooling station in East Park on its website last week.
The documents include the original license agreement between the city and the utility from 1976, original plans for the transmission lines that run beneath the park and current documents that cover various proposals and reports.
Duquesne Light wants to build a cooling oil station along Cedar Avenue in the park on top of transmission lines that run between substations at Brunot’s Island and Arsenal Park in Lawrenceville.
The website presents the documents “without comment, for public scrutiny.”
In the original plan that accompanied the 1976 blueprints, certain items relating to East Park have been circled or underlined.
Audrey Glickman, Harris’s acting chief of staff, said they found the marks on the documents when Public Works dug them up.
On pages four and five of the PDF document, “Do Not Injure or Cut Tree Roots” is circled, as well as item 3.6, which lays out guidelines for the restoration of the park’s surface after construction.
A report to the councilwoman by Fred Reginella, a private engineer who used to work for the city, concludes that Duquesne Light has the ability to build the maintenance structure by Union Avenue rather than along Cedar Avenue as the company originally wanted.
Reginella’s report states that building along Union Avenue is possible from a mechanical standpoint, but will cost more.
He could not comment on the feasibility of building an underground vault for the electronic components of the structure, but suggested that underground equipment would not be subject to vandals the way an above-ground structure would.
Duquesne Light’s most recent plan for the structure available on the website shows a simple blueprint for the construction of a structure along Union Avenue connected to an underground vault along Cedar Avenue by underground ducts.
Harris’s website also includes two historic documents, one from 1863 and one from 1869, that lay out park use guidelines.
To read more about the disagreement between Duquesne Light and the Allegheny Commons Initiative, read any of The Northside Chronicle’s earlier stories:
