Innovative Streetscape Being Added in Vandergrift

Posted on 20 April, 2010

Combines beauty with function

The six beautiful new street trees being added to Vandergrift’s Columbia Avenue will be attracting a lot of attention, but the real story is what’s underneath them – a unique frame system that gives the trees a much healthier growing environment than most street trees enjoy, and provides the community with an innovative way to manage rain water.

This is the first use in Westmoreland County of a unique frame system called a Silva Cell. Picture a rectangular dining room table, take off the top, and turn it upside down and you get an idea of what a Silva Cell looks like. Its design creates both void spaces (the areas in between the six “table legs” of the cell) where healthy volumes of soil can be added to support the trees’ growth…and structural support (the “table legs” themselves topped with a rigid but open platform) that allows paving to be added very near the tree trunks so that people can walk on the surface.

The paving used on this Columbia Avenue project will be permeable concrete, another unique product that allows rain to run right through it and into the ground, instead of just hitting the surface and running off into the sewer system, as it would with traditional concrete. When the project is finished, virtually all of the rain that falls on the approximately 6-foot by 180-foot new tree planting area will sink into the ground. Much of it will be used by the trees. Any water remaining will gradually sink into the soil nearby.

Porous concrete's ability to infiltrate water has many benefits. "When rain infiltrates into the ground, it reduces the amount of water being added to the storm sewer system -- and every step we take in this direction helps to hold down the need to build new infrastructure," explained Westmoreland Conservation District Landscape Architect Kathy Hamilton.

Infiltration also helps to replenish the groundwater, which many people with wells rely on for their water supply, and it helps to reduce neighborhood flooding.

The Westmoreland Conservation District is coordinating the design of the Columbia Avenue project, and Bruce Construction, LLC is overseeing the construction and planting.

Partners in the project include the Vandergrift Improvement Program and the borough of Vandergrift. Funding is being provided by Pennsylvania’s Growing Greener II program, an initiative funded by Pennsylvania voters in the 2005 primary election when they passed a $625 million bond referendum to be used for conservation projects statewide.

Growing Greener II is the single largest environmental investment in Pennsylvania’s history. No new taxes or fees have been needed to fund this important initiative.

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