Introduction

Percentage of Philadelphia that is parkland

14% parkland

Percentage of Philadelphia streams that are impaired

97% impaired

Natural resource conservation challenges in Philadelphia

100% urban city/county, densely populated, high poverty rate (20-24%)

Top 2 sources of stream impairment

Agriculture and stormwater runoff

3 major stream/river pollutants

Nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment

Stormwater

Rainfall or snowmelt that runs across impervious surfaces and into waterways untreated

Impact of Philadelphia’s grid plan on steams

Nature had to be remade for drainage (cutting and filling, waffle analogy)

3 justifications for burying streams in Philadelphia

Health (waste disposal, slaughterhouses, tanneries– miasma theory), encouraging real estate development (uniform lots), drainage (cheapest to use stream valley)

Consequences of burying streams in Philadelphia

Sewer collapses and cave-ins, disease and death (sewers emptying into drinking water, cholera/typhoid– dilution theory didn’t work), sewage fumes, dead zones (no oxygen in the rivers), combined sewer overflows

Origin of water treatment in Philadelphia

5 water treatment plants (sand filtration) built starting in 1899, largest system in the world at the time

3 drinking water plants in Philadelphia

Baxter (60%, Delaware), Queen Lane, Belmont

Water treatment process

Natural sedimentation, chemical addition, flocculation, sedimentation, filtration, final chemical treatment

1970s environmental acts that impacted water

Clean Water Act (1972), Safe Drinking Water Act (1974)

Delaware River tidal zone

Up to Trenton

Delaware River salt line

Up to Wilmington

Cryptosporidium

Waterborne, chlorine-resistant, parasite that caused the largest waterborne disease outbreak in US history in Milwaukee in 1993

Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862

Federal grants for agricultural colleges, one per state

Morrill Act of 1890

Forbade racial discrimination in land-grant admissions, led to creation of 19 Black land-grants

Hatch Act of 1887

$15k to each land-grant college to establish agricultural research stations

Smith-Lever Act of 1914

Established cooperative extension