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 while back, I learned that Grid contributor Carolyn Kousky is a national expert on flood insurance, a topic I knew little about. I asked her to write a primer for our readers who, if they’re anything like me, could stand to learn something. When I read through her first draft, I learned that FEMA
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For two decades, author Jeff Goodell has been working the climate beat for Rolling Stone magazine. He says it was while writing his first book about the coal industry and witnessing mountaintop removal mining that he understood the peril the planet is in. He’s given countless more readers that same dreadful understanding in his back-to-back
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Imagine walking on an abandoned pier in Philadelphia and entering a lush park surrounded by a mosaic of wetlands. An elegant heron jabs downward with its long, sharp beak, and you peer into the clear water to see what it’s after. Schools of fish swim over mussels amid waving green plants. This is the concept
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It doesn’t take 40 days and 40 nights of rain to flood your basement in Germantown, or — if you live in Manayunk on Venice Island — the first floor of your apartment building. In parts of Camden you might not need any rain at all, just a high tide on a full moon. Global
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What’s the size of a toaster and uses three times the energy of an average Pennsylvania household? That would be a cryptocurrency mining machine — a computer that runs 24/7 and spits out numbers in an attempt to solve complex problems, creating proof-of-work cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, as a result. “We have companies that have 80,000
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I used to have a neighbor across our alley who worked for the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD). He was a friendly, likable guy, but there was evidence, like his big SUV, that he wasn’t in lockstep with the street’s green-minded residents. He grew tomatoes and peppers on his deck, like many of us do, but
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Last summer, on a small beach along the Cooper River, seventeen-year-olds Star Beauchamps and Mickey Carter-Lopes waited to pull canoes into shore. This was their typical summer weekday: paddling, teaching and comparing the polka dot tan lines on their feet thanks to Crocs and hours spent working in the sun. The friends were two of
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Our Water Matters is an ongoing series produced through an editorial collaboration of the Chestnut Hill Local, Delaware Currents and Grid Magazine. Ever since the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) created a plan to fix its archaic sewer systems in 2011, proponents have held up the resulting program — Green City, Clean Waters — as a
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Our Water Matters is an ongoing series produced through an editorial collaboration of the Chestnut Hill Local, Delaware Currents and Grid Magazine. Across the country, civil engineers and water experts are bracing for new requirements announced in December 2023 by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to take effect. For the first time, water systems may
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Carla Robinson is the editor of the Chestnut Hill Local. This story was produced in partnership with the Chestnut Hill Local. Kyle Bagenstose contributed to this report. Rev. Chester Williams has been dealing with floods in his basement since the fall of 1969, when he returned from service in Vietnam and bought his house in
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