Floods are expensive. Homes and the possessions inside them are costly to repair and replace, plus displaced flood victims often have to pay to stay elsewhere while their home is made livable again. Here, we unpack the main tool for helping residents handle those costs: flood insurance. Know your flood risk Bounded by rivers and
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When Weavers Way Co-op started building their new store in Germantown, they realized its roof was the perfect site for a solar array. Members had long hoped to power their operations with clean energy. There was only one problem: There was little chance the co-op would be able to pay upfront for installation. “We’re consuming
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Camden In June 2021, Grid published a story on flooding in Camden’s Cramer Hill neighborhood, highlighting the disaster’s disparate impact on low-income communities of color. Since Grid last checked in, Franco Montalto, an engineering professor and researcher at Drexel University, and his team completed an advanced model that can simulate a variety of different infrastructure
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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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When West Philadelphia mechanic Wayne Fleishman has to repair a computer-related issue on a vehicle, he often finds himself reaching out to the manufacturer for more information. After all, newer models have more than a dozen computer systems helping control everything from the tires to the lane departure warning. Dealerships sell repair information digitally to
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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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As a Philly bicycle commuter, it’s long been my dream to race through the city slapping tickets on all the cars parked in the bike lanes. In the eyes of bikers, many of the everyday users of city streets — delivery trucks, contractor vans, Ubers picking up and depositing passengers, even residents dropping off groceries
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Since former Mayor Jim Kenney set a goal three years ago of making Philadelphia carbon neutral by 2050, City government has been busy. It has replaced street lights with efficient LEDs, electrified its vehicle fleet and improved the energy efficiency of City buildings. All those initiatives can only go so far to help Philadelphia become
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