Area's Population Remains Stagnant

Allegheny County and many South Hills communities have lost people or experienced stagnant growth over the past 10 years, but Collier Township’s population exploded during that time.

Collier increased by nearly 35 percent while the other three communities that make up the Chartiers Valley area – Bridgeville, Heidelberg and Scott Township – remained mostly the same, .

Collier now has 7,080 people living in the township, up from 5,265 in 2000. Township Commissioner Bob Schuler said the sizeable increase will help Collier when requesting federal and state money, but he added that more will be expected from the municipality.

“I’ve seen it growing all the time, but it increases those responsibilities,” Schuler said. “Our public parks, we really need to build those up because there are more people to serve. There’s a lot of young families and we need to help support them, and we also need to get more activities for our seniors.”

And Collier still has more room to expand as new developments continue to sprout across the rural township. That isn’t the case for the other three communities that are mostly landlocked.

Heidelberg was the only other community to gain residents, increasing by slightly less than 2 percent to 1,244 people. Scott Township lost 1.5 percent of its population in the past 10 years and now has 17,024 resident. Meanwhile, Bridgeville now has 5,148 people after losing nearly 4 percent of its population.

Overall, the four municipalities gained a combined 1,377 residents and there are now 30,496 people living in the Chartiers Valley area. That number seems to be relatively encouraging after Allegheny County lost 4.6 percent of its residents and now has a population of 1,223,348, according to the Census.

The U.S. Census Bureau released the figures from Pennsylvania earlier this month after conducting the constitutionally mandated count of all people living in the United States last year. The 2010 Census will determine everything from the number of elected representatives each district has to how much federal or state money each community receives.

Go to http://factfinder2.census.gov for more more detailed statistics from the 2010 Census figures.