The boiler house at Springdale’s former Cheswick Generating Station isn’t going down without a fight.
The pull-down demolition of the structure started at about 9:35 a.m. Sunday. But only 70% of the building collapsed amid billowing clouds of soot-gray dust that wafted down the Allegheny River.
“It’s not exactly what we planned but, still, we’ll be able to finish the rest of the job here,” said Scott Reschly, president of Charah Environmental Redevelopment Group, the Louisville- based firm that bought the site in 2022.
“We do apologize for the disruption of the community,” he added. “We were hoping this was going to be the last time we would have a major shutdown of the roads. But it looks like we’re going to have one more.”
The rest of the boiler house will be demolished Saturday. The exact timing was not announced.
What’s left of the 13-story tower of rusted metal is stable, officials stressed.
Bryan Mathews of Springdale said he had a sense of déjà vu from Sunday’s event, referencing a June 2023 implosion of two smokestacks at the site. That demolition caused an air blast and knocked out power and sent dust and debris onto nearby properties.
“We’re just wondering, what’s next?” said Mathews of Pittsburgh Street. “The first time there was a gaffe, the second time there was a gaffe. Safety needs to be a priority. There’s no game plan to demo half a building.”
It remained unclear if the demolition company working at the power station site had a Plan B, in the event problems arose Sunday with the pull-down.
“The biggest thing we always have to look out for is the safety of the public, the safety of our workers,” said Brian Baumann, president of B&B Wrecking, when asked about his company’s Plan B.
Reschly said “it’s not frequent” for Charah to encounter similar problems at other sites they’ve redeveloped.
Three households on lower Porter Street, near the site, will be temporarily relocated in hotels by Charah, “out of an abundance of caution,” said Bruno Moretti, Allegheny Valley Emergency Management coordinator.
Reschly and Baumann joined Springdale police and emergency managers during a press conference at 1:15 p.m. The remains of the boiler house stood behind them as police reopened Pittsburgh Street and other roads that surround the site.
The pull-down itself took just seconds. Before the literal dust had settled, it appeared officials and engineers were scrambling for alternatives to bring down what was left of the boiler house.
“Everything — other than that half of the building not coming down — went according to plan,” Springdale police Sgt. Frederick Hockenberry told reporters right after the demolition attempt.
No explosives were used in Sunday’s demolition, officials said. Instead, crews used a cable-pull technique to demolish the building. A row of six heavy-duty excavators simultaneously pulled cables tied to the structure.
Baumann, who heads the Cleveland- based demolition company behind the Springdale work, indicated there were problems with some cables, which were wrapped around beams that supported the structure.
The appearance of a slight tilt to the remaining parts of the boiler house also is not a concern, he added. The tilted materials were mostly peeling siding, not the bones of the building.
No injuries or property damage have been reported. More than 40 police officers and dozens more firefighters and first responders detoured motorists and stood guard before, during and after the demolition.
At least six municipal police forces — from Springdale to Harmar to Fox Chapel — were represented Sunday.
The demolition, originally slated for Saturday, had been postponed because of weather conditions, particularly the wind, officials said.
The boiler house is the last building at the former Cheswick Power Station. The last coal-fired electric power plant in Allegheny County, it was commissioned in 1970 and closed in 2022.
Several Springdale residents stopped Sunday morning along Pittsburgh Street, Springdale’s main thoroughfare, to shoot video of the implosion on their cellphones.
Maria Myers wasn’t surprised things didn’t go according to plan.
The Springdale woman, who’s lived in the borough for 23 years, said the lawsuit-spurring implosion of the plant’s two smokestacks in June 2023 foreshadowed what happened this weekend.
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“It went like I expected it to,” said Myers, 47. “I didn’t expect it all to come down. After last time, I expected something to go awry.”
“I’m not disappointed it’s going, I’m disappointed it’s taken this long to get down,” she added. “Hopefully, (redevelopment at the site) means we’ll have a lot more jobs in the area, so people without a college education don’t have to work at Dollar General.”
Norm DeLay of Cheswick laughed when the demolition Sunday stopped.
“It’s been two years too long,” he said. “It should have been done.”
DeLay said authorities haven’t been clear with their plans for demolition or for plans with the property. He said imploding the building would have been more efficient.
“This could have all been done and over with when they imploded the stacks,” DeLay said. “It’s ridiculous. Now we have to wait another week.”
Edward Hetrick of Porter Street also wasn’t pleased with how Sunday went, but said he was fortunate he didn’t live on lower Porter Street, which will be blocked off to traffic until the remaining portion of the building is pulled down.
“As soon as it happened, I said, ‘Somebody messed up,’ ” Hetrick said. “They said it was going to only last 30 seconds, and here we are.”
Charah Solutions purchased about 58 acres of the Springdale land that housed the station from GenOn Holdings in April 2022, Allegheny County property records show.
Dust moved in the direction of East Deer/Tarentum. There’s still some portion of the building remaining … @TribLIVEpic.twitter.com/jEsPoUtzks
— Kellen Stepler (@KellenStepler) March 2, 2025
They bought the largest tract, which measured more than 47 acres, for $10, county records show. Its assessed value this year is more than $1.7 million.
GenOn Holdings had announced in June 2021 that it was closing the plant.
After the sale, cleanup efforts followed. Contractors demolished buildings, removed materials containing asbestos, and recycled materials ranging from copper to structural steel.
When the station’s smokestacks were imploded in June 2023, they came down with a crash and a huge cloud of dust.
In September 2023, 16 Springdale residents filed a lawsuit that sought to block the implosion of the boiler house. Citing damages to their health and properties from the chimney implosion, they asserted the same would occur with an implosion of the boiler house.
An Allegheny County Common Pleas judge granted them an injunction after a monthslong trial. In November 2024, Superior Court reversed the decision, allowing the boiler house’s implosion to move forward.
Charah has said it hopes to redevelop the riverside tract for industrial uses.
In 2022, the power station continued to produce 565 megawatts of electric power, enough to fuel up to 500,000 homes a year, according to government-issued data about power consumption.
Over the years, environmental advocates had voiced strong concerns about the power station’s emissions.
In 2018, PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center named the Cheswick station its “#1 most toxic polluter in Allegheny County.” Two years earlier, the plant had emitted more than 200 pounds of chromium, a toxin they said was strongly linked to cancers and asthma.
Detours and road closures started at about 8:30 a.m. Sunday around the former power station site, which is bordered on the north by Pittsburgh Street and on the south by railroad tracks and the banks of the Allegheny River.
Motorists were free to drive past the site — and sheltered residents to leave their homes — about 41⁄2 hours later.
Kellen Stepler (kstepler@triblive.com) and Justin Vellucci (jvellucci@triblive.com) are TribLive staff writers.