{"id":172052,"date":"2026-04-21T18:16:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:16:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/172052\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T18:16:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T18:16:13","slug":"pennsylvania-american-water-completes-8-million-upgrade-after-dam-removal-drops-river-levels-wpxi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/172052\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania American Water completes $8 million upgrade after dam removal drops river levels \u2013 WPXI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Soon after the Elizabeth Dam in the Monongahela River\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2024\/07\/23\/elizabeth-dam-demolition-timeline-accelerated.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">started getting demolished in the summer of 2024<\/a>, Pennsylvania American Water Co.\u2019s big water-treatment plant downriver in Elrama noticed a higher-than-expected drop in the water levels.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The E.H. Aldrich Treatment plant draws raw water from the Mon and then treats it for eventual drinking water for customers south of Pittsburgh.\u00a0The plant is used to changes\u00a0in the water levels in the Mon River depending on the season. But the dam\u2019s removal changed water levels more than expected, leading to navigation changes on the river. At the Elrama plant, the water levels were down more than 3 feet.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">\u201cFor our intake, it made it a little more difficult,\u201d said Timothy Patterson, superintendent of treatment at the E.H. Aldrich Plant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">The plant\u2019s pumps that pull water from the river\u00a0became less efficient, drawing in less water and more of the debris and silt that needs to get filtered out before the water can be used for drinking. So the plant needed to put into operation more pumps to gain enough water out of the river and then more work to sift through the silt and debris. <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2026\/04\/16\/pennsylvania-american-water-upgrade.html?ana=wpxi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/pittsburgh\/news\/2026\/04\/16\/pennsylvania-american-water-upgrade.html?ana=wpxi\">Click here to read more from our partners at the Pittsburgh Business Times.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Download the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/mobile-apps\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">FREE WPXI News app<\/a> for breaking news alerts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph\">Follow Channel 11 News on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/wpxi\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Facebook<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/WPXI\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Twitter<\/a>. | <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpxi.com\/video\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch WPXI NOW<\/a><\/p>\n<p>TOP STORIES FROM CHANNEL 11 NEWS <\/p>\n<p class=\"default__StyledText-sc-tl066j-0 gJuxXh body-paragraph body-copyright\">\u00a92026 Cox Media Group<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Soon after the Elizabeth Dam in the Monongahela River\u00a0started getting demolished in the summer of 2024, Pennsylvania American&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":60371,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,757],"class_list":{"0":"post-172052","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-pennsylvania","9":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","10":"tag-pennsylvania-news","11":"tag-wpxi"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60371"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}