On Thursday Philadelphia City Council unanimously voted to pass a bill to exempt the Cobbs Creek golf course from zoning rules protecting steep slopes from logging. Those steep slope protections exist to prevent erosion and flooding caused when trees, whose roots hold soil in place, are cut down. The bill creates a special “overlay district”
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The Lower Merion School District, Lower Merion Township and Haverford Township have announced a tentative deal for the Black Rock Middle School to use the Polo Field in the Bryn Mawr section of Haverford Township for baseball and softball practice space, according to an announcement last week, likely resulting in less land clearing and construction
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This spring students from five Philadelphia schools will go birding thanks to funding raised by the In Color Birding Club. The club, launched during the pandemic by Upper Darby birder Jason Hall, committed to not only providing a space for adult BIPOC birders, but also offering a gateway to birding for local children. Club board
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Before she started working on the green schoolyard at Henry C. Lea School in West Philadelphia, landscape architect Sara Pevaroff Schuh, principal of SALT Design Studio, encountered a group of kids who called her over after finding what they said was a spider on playground equipment. It turned out to be a half-squished worm. She
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Dwayne Wharton was tasked with helping to solve one health care crisis affecting kids when he discovered another. Wharton was working for The Food Trust in the mid-2010s, and that organization’s goal was to reduce the number of sugary beverages, especially soda, kids were drinking. They encouraged students to drink more water from the ubiquitous
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On Thursday, January 19, the effort to pass legislation to waive restrictions for clearing trees on steep slopes for the Cobbs Creek golf course passed one hurdle at the Philadelphia City Planning Commission, though final passage will be delayed thanks to amendments introduced by the sponsor, Councilmember Curtis Jones Jr. The bill would create a
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Short dumpers have left more piles of tires in Tacony Creek Park, according to Julie Slavet, the executive director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF). Two piles — one near the intersection of Garland Street and Tabor Road, and another beneath the Whitaker Avenue Bridge — were discovered on Monday, January 2. Another pile was
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I would be lying if I said I’d never snuck in anywhere I wasn’t supposed to. I have gone herping (recreationally searching for reptiles and amphibians) all over Philadelphia, and more than once I have taken a look at a “No Trespassing” sign, glanced over my shoulder to see if anyone was watching and pressed
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To the south of 86th Street in Southwest Philadelphia’s Eastwick neighborhood you can’t drive more than a few yards on the cross streets before you run into concrete barriers. “We had them put up the barricades since they would pull back in the cul-de-sac and dump,” says Leonard Stewart, a longtime Eastwick resident and community
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Three Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) trash skimming boats ply the waters of the Delaware and Schuylkill rivers, floating goalkeepers trying to prevent plastic debris from reaching the ocean. The current circulating around the North Atlantic leaves a quiet section of ocean in the middle called a gyre. A patch of plastic garbage hundreds of miles
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