Every human produces a little more than 4.5 ounces of excrement per day. Multiplied by the 2.2 million customers of the Philadelphia Water Department’s wastewater system, the cumulative daily dump equals about 620,811 pounds, or about 310 tons. The story of biosolids (treated sewage sludge) starts with clean water in the toilet bowls of the
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A special meeting by the Philadelphia Art Commission scheduled to review plans for buildings on the Cobbs Creek and Karakung golf courses, which took place on July 27, 2022, led to a conceptual approval by the commission of one set of the buildings proposed for the site, with the commission requesting that the Cobbs Creek
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Fourteen years ago, I began stewarding portions of land in the Upper Roxborough neighborhood of Philadelphia. At the outset, it was a mere 2,400 square feet in the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education (SCEE) organic community garden plots. I worked shoulder to shoulder with SCEE staff and fellow gardeners to clear invaders from fence lines
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On Thursday, June 30, 2022, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education’s plans to sell a 24-acre parcel of land called the Boy Scout Tract met with sharp questions and numerous objections from neighbors at a public virtual meeting of two local civic associations, the Upper Roxborough Civic Association and the Residents of Shawmont Valley Association.
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About 80 acres in the Somerton neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia have been conspicuously left out of Philadelphia City Councilmember Katherine Gilmore Richardson’s legislation to improve the city’s tree canopy protections, which passed City Council on June 16, 2022. The Somerton Civic Association is lobbying to change that. Northeast Avenue comes to a tree-shaded end in
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We had come to share stories, mourn the loss of the trees, and build a movement. We gathered on a warm Saturday in late April, at the place where Haddington Woods meets Karakung Golf Course, in the shade of a sugar maple that had been spared by the lumber trucks. Tim Dunn unloaded two saplings
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Philadelphia parks advocates are celebrating an increase in Philadelphia Parks & Recreation funding, $4.99 million above what Mayor Jim Kenney had requested for fiscal year 2023. Philadelphia’s park system has been chronically underfunded for decades, and as City Council worked on a budget deal for 2023, advocate groups such as the Philadelphia Parks Alliance have
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Traffic streams over the Adams Avenue Bridge in the video on the Tacony Creek Suite website. To the motorists, the creek and the park around it are simply something to cross, but the camera, as well as the music, focus on Tacony Creek Park, the corridor of flowing water and forest in the middle. “Each
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The Parkside Saints finally found a home. An October 4, 2019 announcement from Philadelphia’s Rebuild initiative announced the completion of a practice field for the youth football club at the Parkside Evans Playground in West Philadelphia. The Saints, founded in 2010 by Coach Cliff Smith, had practiced in whatever open space they could find in
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Does healthier soil create food that has more nutrients? At Pasa Sustainable Agriculture, we have several community-science research projects based on farms working to find the answer to that intriguing question, because the wellness of our bodies is very likely linked to the overall health and wellness of the land and water that grow these
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When it comes to how the City manages public land, the deck is stacked. When the City leased the Cobbs Creek Golf Course to the Cobbs Creek Foundation, a West Conshohocken-based nonprofit, for $1 for 30 years, there were no competing bids. There was no discussion about how people in the community might like to
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