About three miles away from Pittsburgh lies the borough of Millvale. This small, historic town has been the focus of sustainable efforts for the past two decades after the disastrous flooding from the remnants of Hurricane Ivan in 2004.

Millvale, boxed into a tight space right outside of city limits, never had many parks or outside activities for young families with children. For many people, being trapped in an urban area with few green spaces and lots of cars makes it hard to express themselves.

Although there is a basketball court and a small playground near the heart of Millvale, for many kids there still isn’t much to do outside.

To address that, a new sustainable park is being created, not only to push for sustainable efforts but to do more for the people that live there.

This new park takes into account a lot of the current and past issues of Millvale and provides some innovative solutions. Families and children across Millvale who have a distinct lack of outdoors space available will directly benefit from the new sustainable park being developed.

“The community wanted a safe place for children to enjoy. Currently, there are a couple of very small parks, somewhat restricted to certain ages of children. This park will be much larger and will accommodate children of all ages, and will be a park which will attract people to Millvale, as it is visible from route 28,” Mrs. Abbey Nilson, Shaler Area High School’s Sustainability teacher and the sponsor of the Sustainability Club, said.

This park will work in innovative ways to improve functionality, including installments such as rain gardens and a special type of pavement that is specially porous. These will allow the park to soak up rain water instead of letting it flow into the creek like regular parks.

Members of the Sustainability Club came together to plant the rain gardens in the fall of 2023.

The park will have a woodland theme that shows regional creatures of Pennsylvania. One notable visual feature of the playground is a large raccoon shaped centerpiece. The park will also feature an assortment of things to do and see that are outside of just a playground, but the project is far from complete.

“The sign and name will be determined this spring. The mural will be completed this spring, as well as the basketball court, the pump track, and maybe the walking trail. The playground equipment will likely be put in sometime next year,” Nilson said.

Several of those tasks like developing the park name, entrance sign, mural featured inside of the park, and the rain garden design will be planned and/or completed by Sustainability students.

“I love being able to give students the opportunity to work on real world projects. They get to be a part of something important, learn and use skills to help make the community a better place, and work with community leaders,” Nilson said.

This park is part of a larger initiative.

About 12 years ago Millvale borough worked towards being declared an EcoDistrict, a special term coined by the company Just Communities that makes it easy for towns to become environmentally friendly and community oriented through a specific set of criteria.

The first EcoDistrict in the country was the neighboring town of Etna, and soon after, Millvale followed suit. Towns that want this EcoDistrict certification have to fit eight criteria: green buildings, living infrastructure, resource efficiency and regeneration, mobility options and connectivity, habitat creation and preservation, health and well-being, equitable development and prosperity, and public spaces and community identity.

The concept of an EcoDistrict is not only important for the environment, but it has a lot of focus on the community trying to promote a healthier population socially and economically. Public amenities like parks and community gardens make Millvale more walkable, which provides that healthy environment within the town.

Nilson has a lot of experience with Millvale. She has been a part of many environmental movements and is a part of the Millvale Community Development Corporation (MCDC), a non-profit organization which promotes active and sustainable growth in the community.

“The movement to earn EcoDistrict certification was brought about by the devastating floods of 2004. As a result of the EcoDistrict efforts, Millvale is a leader in renewable energy, stormwater infrastructure, and hosts a “free fridge” for its residents, just to name a few things. Millvale has received both state and national recognition for its efforts,” Nilson said.

In the past, a tremendous amount of environmental work was done to protect Girty’s Woods, a 155-acre plot of forest. Nilson and her Sustainability students worked on raising money to preserve this plot of wooded land that would have been cut down and developed if people all around Pittsburgh did not band together to raise money and awareness.

“Shaler Area students had a huge role in the Save Girty’s Woods campaign. Students raised over $10,000 to help the Allegheny Land Trust purchase and protect Girty’s Woods in 2021. Most of that money was through a fundraiser involving trees we grew in our classroom,” Nilson recalled.

With massive plots of developed land like the Ross Park Mall, water ends up in sewer drains that feed creeks like Girty’s Run. Girty’s Woods is important to Millvale because it helps prevent creeks overflowing by soaking up rain water into the ground, instead of it rolling into drains that feed the creek.

When water is not soaked up naturally and is instead dumped into creeks that feed the river, heavy rainfall causes flooding that impacts communities that do not even contribute to the excess of water being dumped into the creek.

In the past, floods in Millvale have devastated homes and small businesses alike, which is a main cause for all of these sustainable efforts.

“I woke up to sirens and was rushed out of my house when the creek flooded in 2018. It was really scary, and we had to end up moving because of how destroyed my house was,” Shaler Area senior Thomas Emanuele said.

Anyone interested in contributing to the park and working within the Millvale community, there will be a volunteer workday on April 6. If you can’t support the movement in person, there is a donation link on the Neighborhood Allies website that allows you to contribute towards the cause and the Shaler Area Sustainability Club will be holding a succulent sale whose proceeds go towards the park.