Harrisburg, Pennsylvania — An Economic Profile

INFRASTRUCTURE

WHILE MANY CITIES ARE FACING THE UNFORTUNATE REALITIES OF DETERIORATING INFRASTRUCTURE SYSTEMS FROM ONGOING DEFERRAL OF MAINTENANCE AND IMPROVEMENTS DUE TO DWINDLING TAX BASES, HARRISBURG’S LEADERSHIP AND FORESIGHT HAVE RESULTED IN BOLD STEPS TO UPGRADE ITS PUBLIC WORKS OPERATIONS TO MEET DEMAND WELL INTO THE 21ST CENTURY.

In 1982, Mayor Reed launched the Mayor’s Energy and Revenue Development Program. This bold initiative has increased non-tax city revenues, cut operating expenses, and provided energy for area homes and businesses through the use of renewable resources. The program has received national acclaim as a pioneering example of how municipalities can supplement income while providing essential services.

PUBLIC WORKS

Harrisburg Materials Energy, Recycling and Resource Recovery Facility (HMERRF). Operated by the City’s Department of Incineration and Steam Generation, the HMERRF burns the municipal solid waste generated principally in the city and Dauphin County. Heat from the incinerator process, combined with super-heated water, produces steam.

The City’s facility includes a co-generation plant. There, the steam is used to generate electricity in the 8.2-megawatt turbine-generator, which is sold to PPL Corp. for use in area homes and businesses.

Residual steam is also piped and sold to the NRG Energy Center Harrisburg, Inc., a private company that operates the downtown district heating system which has been in existence for over 100 years. NRG sells steam to 350 residential, commercial and industrial customers via seven miles of underground steam pipes.

Under its current ownership, the steam system has seen resurgence in customer growth because of the addition of major new building projects downtown. NRG produces its steam using conventional oil and gas-fired boilers. In addition to steam production, it purchases co-generated steam from an adjacent plant and from the City’s HMERRF. In the last several years, over 30 percent of NRG steam has come from a combination of the city’s facility and the adjacent co-generation plant. This central source of energy provides distinct environmental benefits to downtown air quality. A Lunkenheimer steam whistle sounds at noon each weekday from the NRG plant as a nostalgic tribute to the city’s industrial history.

In addition to these facilities, a Waste Transfer Station was opened by the City in 1998 at the HMERRF. The Station is a conveniently located, waste holding and transfer facility for non-combustible materials that cannot be disposed of at the HMERRF. Local haulers deposit their loads at the Station for pick-up by larger regional haulers, which specialize in certain types of waste recycling, such as building and construction materials. The Transfer Station plays an important environmental role in the midstate, helping to reduce the amount of waste-hauling truck traffic, decreasing auto emissions as well as wear and tear on the midstate road system.

By 2001, the city government’s energy and revenue development operations had burned over 4.5 million tons of trash, produced over 14.2 billion pounds of steam, co-generated 850 million kilowatts of electricity, saved over 9.2 million cubic yards of landfill space and provided the energy equivalent of 800 million gallons of foreign fuel oil.

Of particular note is the new agreement between Dauphin County and the City through which both have jointly established and operate a County-City solid waste management office. This replaces what had been the County Solid Waste Authority. The new endeavor has reduced costs and shifted the disposal of county waste from environmentally damaging landfills to the HMERRF, thus generating additional sources of revenue while simultaneously disposing of waste more efficiently.

Advanced Wastewater Treatment Plant. Owned by the Harrisburg Authority and operated under lease by the Harrisburg Department of Public Works, this facility processes waste water, with an average daily flow capacity of 37.7 million gallons, from the city and six neighboring suburban communities covering a 43-square-mile area in Dauphin County and serving 143,000 people. The residual sludge generates methane gas, which, in the past, was vented directly into the atmosphere. The gas is now burned to produce electricity, which is sold to PPL Electric Utility Corp. for use in area homes and stores. The heat from the process is captured and used to heat the plant’s buildings.

The plant has implemented new technology and techniques for sludge processing, resulting in nearby wastewater plants and sludge producers shipping their raw sludge to the Harrisburg plant for processing. This additional service brings in new plant revenues. The increased volume of sludge produces greater quantities of methane gas and therefore more electrical energy revenues. The plant has been selected by the central Pennsylvania section of the Water Pollution Control Association of PA for two top awards in plant safety and laboratory operations. It has also received the US. Environmental Protection Agency’s First Place Award for its wastewater pre- treatment program, the top national award for water pollution control.

Water System. The City’s Bureau of Water is responsible for the distribution of water to over 60,000 customers in all of Harrisburg, large portions of Penbrook Borough and Susquehanna Township, and a number of customers in Swatara and Lower Paxton townships. The main water source is located north of Harrisburg at DeHart Dam’s six-billion-gallon raw water reservoir in a 13,500-acre watershed. The system also includes 50 million gallons of finished water storage at Reservoir Park in the eastern portion of the city, a meter repair shop, a DER Certified Bacteriological Analysis Laboratory, over 160 miles of distribution mains, and in excess of 1,800 fire hydrants. The most extensive improvement program to the water system in 50 years was completed in 1994, including:

• Construction of a new 20-million-gallons-per-day capacity treatment and filtration plant known as the Dr. Robert E. Young Water Services Center including a testing laboratory and administration and maintenance facilities.
• Completion of a water intake, pumping station and transmission line on the Susquehanna River to serve as a secondary water supply to the DeHart Dam in times of severe drought, making the city system as drought-proof as is hydrologically possible.
• Reservoir gatehouse improvements, additional transmission mains and distribution system upgrades, and reservoir repairs.

Street Paving. The City each year makes significant investment through upgrading its street and sidewalk system. In 1999-2000 alone, over 160 highways, streets and alleys were repaved. The City has funded the installation of handicapped-access ramps to all downtown street intersections, and continues to install them at street corners throughout the city, in conjunction with the street-paving program. By 2000, more than 2,300 accessible sidewalks sites had been created citywide. The City has also accommodated the visually impaired by providing detectable warning surfaces on access ramps downtown and by adding audible pedestrian crossing signals at selected intersections.

POLICE AND FIRE

Bureau of Police
With a force of 183 uniformed police officers, and 45 civilian personnel, Harrisburg has the second-highest ratio of officers to residential population of any community in Pennsylvania. The Part One Crime Rate has dropped by 53% since 1981. During this period, burglary, arson, robbery and aggravated assault all show a dramatic decrease and continue to decrease year after year. These major improvements can be attributed to community policing, building a closer partnership with citizens and neighborhoods, providing crime prevention services to residents and businesses and pioneering the use of new computer and law enforcement technologies. Improvements undertaken at the Mayor’s direction include the city’s first-ever canine corps as well as advanced computer technology, one of the first systems of its type in the nation to implement programs that index fingerprints, suspect photographs and criminal case information, dispatch field personnel and a myriad other functions. Also initiated have been the first mounted patrol in 50 years, the first-ever bicycle patrols, which are both highly visible and effective forms of police presence, and the establishment of three community police centers in the city’s uptown, Allison Hill and southern sections.

The Metro System, the City-owned and operated computer system and data bank that allows over three dozen other municipalities and non City agencies, unable to establish their own police computer systems, to tie into that of the city, has been considerably expanded. Harrisburg’s system coordinates multiple agencies’ data and operations to increase police availability for emergency calls for service with an alternative response program, including a report writer’s unit, deferred complaint program and neighborhood dispute mediation system. There are also crime prevention and community relations programs, including such free services as seminars, crime prevention and victim/witness handbooks written by the Mayor; positive lifestyle and anti-drug instruction throughout the school year through the DARE program; youth tours, home and business security inspections and more. Harrisburg continues to achieve National Police Accreditation, first earned in 1989, the highest recognition for a police agency in the Nation. Of over 21,000 law enforcement agencies in the country, fewer than 500 have this distinction.

Bureau of Fire
The City employs 96 firefighters who are trained to exceed national firefighter skill standards. Accomplishments of the Fire Bureau include a 72 percent reduction in the rate of fires from 1982 to 2000; the Fire Pre-Plan Program, an inventory of major buildings’ design, layout, and contents for the development of response plans in the event of fire; and the All-Hazards Emergency Management Plan, a development of response plans for various types of emergencies and disasters, with the city’s plan being considered a model in Pennsylvania.

There is also the Free Inspection Program, in which homes and businesses are inspected free of charge to identify potential fire hazards; creation of both the first mandatory smoke detector ordinance in the state, for all structures where people sleep, and an upgraded city fire code with the best building safety standards of any municipality in Pennsylvania, now being used as a model in other states and cities; and the replacement of all fire apparatus with state-of-the-art vehicles.

The Fire Bureau has established a specialized rescue team known as Rescue One. Team members have been extensively trained in confined space rescue, trench collapse rescue and high angle and building collapse rescue. This regionally recognized team was placed into service in 1993, and is one of only a handful of teams in the nation designated as a National Response Team by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, for potential service anywhere in the country.

Flood Control
The City has created state-of-the-art emergency management systems and flood plain management measures to more effectively monitor, prepare for and reduce potential flood dangers. In particular, the Paxton Creek Local Flood Warning System was completed in 1994 to monitor rainfall and rising waters along the creek in the Cameron Street Corridor, where flooding could precede that of the Susquehanna River. This system includes the installation of strategically placed rain gauges, new computer monitoring equipment (telemetrically connected to monitoring devices), a computerized flood prediction mode program and an electronic telephone warning system. Harrisburg is the only Pennsylvania community to be upgraded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Federal Flood Insurance Administration to a Class-7 community, with the result that city property owners’ base flood insurance premiums are reduced by 15 percent. Only 4 other communities in the nation have a Class 7 or better rating.

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

Harrisburg is well positioned for future growth in the information technology industry. The city is fully wired with fiber optic transmission lines and a variety of providers offer very competitive high-speed data transmission services. Harrisburg’s primary cable television service franchise, Comcast Cable, has completed the installation of a new digital delivery network in the city, with digital television, Internet and data transmission services available. The city is likewise served by all major Internet service providers as well as by many new and often less expensive local service providers. Harrisburg’s convenient geographical location makes it an ideal location for the transmission facilities of wireless service providers.

Start-up and relocation support services for high-tech firms are also provided in Harrisburg, primarily through the Technology Council of Central Pennsylvania, an affiliated agency of the Harrisburg Regional Chamber. Services provided by the Technology Council include site location assistance, grant direction and financing support, employee search and referral, and more.

PRIVATE UTILITIES

Verizon -Pennsylvania. With its regional headquarters and network center located in Center City Harrisburg, Verizon-Pennsylvania telecommunications network serves the metropolitan region. Since 1994, the company’s customers have benefitted from “Intelligent Signaling.” Since 2000, digital switching has been provided to all customers. High-speed digital switches are the frameworks of advanced services such as Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), which allows simultaneous voice, data and video transmission over the same telephone line. In 1998, Verizon-Pennsylvania launched a high-speed data communications service, for residential customers, called Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL). This platform allows consumers to receive data from the Internet, or to connect to their office’s local area networks, at rapid speeds.

UGI Corporation. The city is provided natural gas energy by UGI Utilities, a major diversified energy company headquartered in Pennsylvania that has had a Harrisburg presence since 1880. The employer of 190 people in Harrisburg, UGI’s area headquarters is located at 1500 Paxton Street. The facility was expanded several years ago at a cost of over $2.3 million to include the construction of a 12,000 square-foot warehouse, expanded off-street parking facilities, site improvements and a major renovation of its three-story headquarters building.

UGI services 80,000 customers in the Harrisburg region, which includes Dauphin, Cumberland, Lebanon and northern York counties; and over 271,000 customers in the corporation’s Gas Utility division, which also includes Lancaster, Reading and the Lehigh Valley. In 2000, UGI spent over $3.7 million for the installation of gas lines to service new residential and commercial customers in the Harrisburg area.

PPL Electric Utility Corp. The city’s electric distribution system is provided primarily by PPL Electric Utility Corp. With its regional headquarters based in Harrisburg, the company is positioned to meet the increasing energy use resulting from the city’s substantial residential, commercial and industrial growth. In the mid 1990s, construction was completed on $16 million electrical substation at Seventh and North Streets, including improvements to the nearby Walnut Street substation and to the underground low-tension network. These facilities dramatically increase service capacities of the central business district in particular and the city as a whole. The service network in the City of Harrisburg provides a unique level of reliability not witnessed by many cities in Pennsylvania.