Dozens of cars,over 60 years old being pulled from Pittsburgh rivers

Captain Evan Clark with Three Rivers Waterkeeper has been working to clean up the Monongahela, Allegheny and Ohio Rivers for 20 years.

And, thanks to a partnership with non-profit Living Lands & Rivers, thousands of pounds of old cars are being removed from our rivers this week into next.

Clark tells KDKA Radio they’ve been working near the Point along the Downtown side of the Allegheny River the past couple days and have pulled up.

Living Lands & Waters travels on rivers around the United States, up to nine months, on a barge pulling old vehicles and other debris from rivers.

“they’ve been pulling cars out of the river, mostly a lot of really old ones, let’s say pre-1960 but, some newer ones as well,” said Clark.

The crews will work for the next week, continuing to pull old cars out of the river along with boats and docks.

So, how did the cars get there? Clark isn’t sure exactly, but there are theories.

“There’s a theory that cars had been pushed off there back in the day as something that had been happening with maybe stolen or abandoned cars,” said Clark.

Crews are using sonar, divers and information from witnesses over the years that have seen a lot of the cars go in.

So far, roughly 100,000 pounds of vehicles and parts of vehicles have been recovered by the crane. That’s about 50 cars, so far.

“A lot of these old cars have been coming up in pieces, so its hard to estimate exactly,” said Clark.

Cars and car parts are being inspected, when they can be, to see if it’s a vehicle that may have been part of a crime or a missing person, but so far, none of them have been.

Living Lands & Waters say they have pulled tens of millions of pounds of stuff from rivers since they began in the late 1990s.

The funding for the cleanup comes from self-funding, corporate donations, and other non-profits, including PCNA which provides funding to Living Lands & Waters.

The vehicles that are recovered will be scrapped.

Callie Schaser, with Living Lands & Waters , says the past two days has been the largest amount of debris they’ve pulled in that time frame since they formed

“There are cars on top of cars, it really is that,” said Schaser. “We did the same area twice today . . . and we still probably pulled 11 (cars) today after pulling 25 (cars) yesterday.”