Less monkeying with your browser's scrollbar if you just go to the online link:

http://media.www.34st.com/media/storage/paper1076/news/2007/02/15/Feature/Water.Woes-2721724.shtml

Great article. Although I wish it mentioned some of the more obvious, less expensive solutions to this problem, particularly surface-level stormwater management and detention. Liberty Lands is going to become a demonstration project for this type of management. It's a start, but it won't be enough to solve the flooding problem.

I feel that the community should urge property-owners to take the responsibility to divert stormwater from the antiquated and failing sewer system. Every new development should be required to implement stormwater management strategies: green roofs, rain gardens, bioswales, street trees, and pourous paving, to name a few. Home and business-owners can do their part by disconnecting their gutters and installing a barrel sistern, dry well, or rain garden.

It is clear that the recent development has been a major contributor to the flooding and water quality issues, but before we insist that the PWD rip up old pipes just to replace them with new pipes (a project that would likely take decades and enormous sums of money), we should insist on more ecological, sustainable, and low-cost solutions.

HILARY, AFTER SEEING YOU IN ACTION AT SEVERAL NLNA MEETINGS I TOLD MY SON-IN-LAW TO TRY TO CONTACT YOU FOR HELP HE NEEDS WITH A PROJECT HE IS WORKING ON IN SOUTH PHILLY. HOW CAN HE CONTACT YOU?

Lorraine, I'd be happy to talk to your son. Send me an email at HilaryRegan@gmail.com.

INFO on sewage plants for Phila from Robin Mann, Sierra Club:

The Pennsylvania DEP is in the process of renewing the Philadelphia Water Department's (PWD) permits for the water department's three sewage treatment plants. PWD's sewage treatment plants discharge into the Delaware River, Tacony Creek, Frankford Creek, Pennypack Creek and Eagle Creek.

Unfortunately, instead of proposing the strongest possible permit to protect public health and the environment, DEP is moving forward with a permit that will allow excessive pollution into our local rivers and streams, endangering the health of the environment and the public.

DEP is collecting comments from concerned citizens on its current proposal through Thursday, February 22, 2007. So take a minute and send an email to Sohan Garg (sgarg@state.pa.us) at DEP asking DEP to strengthen PWD's clean water permits. Here are some talking points to help you write your letter:

Lorraine, I'd be happy to talk to your son. Send me an email at HilaryRegan@gmail.com.

INFO on sewage plants for Phila from Robin Mann, Sierra Club:

The Pennsylvania DEP is in the process of renewing the Philadelphia Water Department's (PWD) permits for the water department's three sewage treatment plants. PWD's sewage treatment plants discharge into the Delaware River, Tacony Creek, Frankford Creek, Pennypack Creek and Eagle Creek.

Unfortunately, instead of proposing the strongest possible permit to protect public health and the environment, DEP is moving forward with a permit that will allow excessive pollution into our local rivers and streams, endangering the health of the environment and the public.

DEP is collecting comments from concerned citizens on its current proposal through Thursday, February 22, 2007. So take a minute and send an email to Sohan Garg (sgarg@state.pa.us) at DEP asking DEP to strengthen PWD's clean water permits.

Low Impact Development, such as green roofs, should be a mandatory for all new developments in NL. Providing a financial incentive is our best hope for encouraging these solutions so we should work with our councilman to introduce "green roof tax credits." The cost of tax credits is far less than upgrading a system or buying a new waste water holding tank (cost nyc a billion dollars).

While Green Roofs prevent runoff and flooding issues from getting worse, they do nothing to solve the problem, which is complex. I don't think anybody has a clear idea of what is going on under our streets. All I know is that something doesn't look right and too many water mains are breaking.

It is these very basic concerns that the water department still has not addressed. The corner of Bodine and Wildey always stinks and the vegetation grows like wildfire through the sidewalk! The streets are sinking, including Bodine, which developed a sinkhole at one point. The garden area of Liberty Lands is sinking exactly where a resident reported seeing some sort of rushing underground stream or culvert a few years before the property became a park. The sewers run directly under all of these problems areas. what's really going on? I know other people must notice this!

I just wonder about any more excavation in this area, particularlly the stables. Seems like a bad idea before we get a handle on the situation.




A SINK HOLE ON BODINE


THE GARDENS AT LIBERTY LANDS SINKING





A HOME SETTLING?


THIS IS A GREAT ARTICLE ABOUT SEWER AND GROUNDWATER ISSUES IN PHILADELPHIA


Philadelphia Inquirer, The (PA)
July 11, 1999
Section: LOCAL
Edition: D
Page: A01

WHAT'S UNDER YOUR HOME? TAKE A LOOK AT PHILA. IDENTIFYING POTENTIAL TROUBLE SPOTS IS A DAUNTING TASK. ATTEMPTING TO FIX THEM IS EVEN MORE DIFFICULT.
Maria Panaritis and Peter Nicholas, INQUIRER STAFF WRITERS

Old brick houses buckled atop a former creek, slowly giving way until one day residents had to flee.

Police and firefighters rushed to the rescue. Politicians promised to find out how it happened. Homeowners complained that they had warned the city of ominous cracks in foundation walls.
Wissinoming, 1999?

No. West Philadelphia, 1931.

In the earlier episode, a man was killed and 13 people injured when two houses collapsed into Mill Creek. The city had enclosed the five-mile waterway in a brick-and-mortar sewer during the late 19th century. The steady flow of waste, flooding from heavy storms, and the weight of traffic and buildings caused sections to collapse.

In Wissinoming, the city last month condemned 25 houses that were built atop an old creek bed in the 1920s. Unstable coal ash had been used to fill the dried creek after the water was diverted into sewers.

The incidents may have unfolded in different ways, but the root cause was the same: Philadelphia is a low-lying city sandwiched between two major rivers and built atop a network of old creeks and streams.

Sewers were installed to capture these waterways. Fill was thrown down to prepare empty creek beds for development. Sometimes, sewers gave way or fill proved unstable - dangers that developed over years and out of view.

The result? In scattered patches of the city, houses sink and occasionally collapse. Streets cave in.

Thirteen mayors have come and gone since the Mill Creek incident, but no administration has taken on the basic issue: How widespread is the danger, and what can be done about it?

"This city, historically, has only responded emergency-to-emergency. It has never been proactive in trying to stop the next emergency," City Controller Jonathan Saidel said.

There's no telling how many more Wissinomings and Mill Creeks might be out there. The prospect of uncovering more - and having to do something about them - is one city leaders do not relish.

Sinking houses fall through cracks in the system. When a hurricane flattens a community, governors and presidents rush in with money. Collapsed houses, the result of slow, subterranean processes, do not qualify for federal assistance. Nor are they covered by most homeowners' insurance policies.

But when houses collapse, the situation can be deadly and costly.

In 1959, a police officer was swept into a caved-in North Philadelphia sewer and killed. In 1961, three more lives were lost when houses collapsed along the Mill Creek sewer. In 1986, nearly 1,000 sinking houses were condemned in the Logan section.

Typically, city officials scramble for short-term solutions that they can afford: aid for victims, demolition of fractured houses, urgent infrastructure repairs.

But the city has never sought systematically to identify neighborhoods that were built atop fill, or to determine the type of fill used - information that can help predict where problems will arise. Officials have only recently begun to catalog where streams once flowed.

"I don't think anyone can imagine how many homes in the city are similarly situated," said former Mayor W. Wilson Goode, who presided over the sinking-house crisis in Logan. "I'm not sure they will reckon with what they uncover if they open that can of worms."

After city officials spent several weeks inspecting, condemning and demolishing houses on three Wissinoming blocks, mayoral spokesman Kevin Feeley said the city's work there was essentially done.

Sen. Arlen Specter (R., Pa.) has summoned the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Geological Survey to explore the possibility of a broader survey, Feeley said.

"To do the kind of work that's required in Wissinoming and throughout the city requires an exhaustive amount of detail, time and money," Feeley said. "It is really painstaking work - test borings all over the place. In every neighborhood."

No city department is equipped to do that, he said.

It's not clear what the city could do even if it could foresee the next crisis. The cost of shoring up sinking houses would be huge. Officials studied the possibility in Logan and determined that, in addition to the massive cost, there was no guarantee the fix would last.

In Wissinoming, the Army Corps will review data already collected to see how widespread the problem is in that community. The Geological Survey will use topographical maps to pinpoint areas that were filled in the neighborhood.

Neither agency plans to search citywide, although city and federal officials predict that will change.

The list of sinking houses and cave-ins is long. A few examples:

In August 1932, a 700-foot-square cave-in above Mill Creek sewer at 43d and Walnut Streets swallowed a 3.5-ton Breyers Ice Cream truck. Two men escaped with injuries. In 1951, a Buick dropped into a 35-foot-deep hole on the same block.

In August 1952, a block of Sansom Street at 43d Street collapsed, swallowing a car and pickup truck. The city evacuated 300 residents. Heavy rains a few days later sent front porches toppling into the pit. Councilman Thomas Guerin said later that the 18-foot-wide Mill Creek sewer was "only the biggest and most glaring exhibit" of problem sewers.

In August 1959, Patrolman Joseph Reiss was swept into a cave-in above Gunner's Run at Fifth and Clearfield Streets in North Philadelphia. His body was found two miles away, where the creek-turned-sewer meets the Delaware.

In July 1961, three people died when four rowhouses in the 5000 block of Funston Street, near Mill Creek, collapsed. The city condemned 115 other houses. Mayor Richardson Dilworth promised to pay "fair market value" for the properties, as Mayor Rendell has done in Wissinoming. Half of the five-mile sewer line was replaced over the years.

In February 1986, nearly 1,000 houses in a 17-block section of Logan bordered by Roosevelt Boulevard were ordered demolished. The 1920s-era houses were sinking into unstable fill. Nearly $33 million has been spent resettling families. The neighborhood has become a wasteland.

On June 11, inspectors swept onto the 6100 block of Hegerman Street in Wissinoming with moving vans and evacuation orders for residents of 12 rowhouses. Thirteen more houses on adjoining Devereaux Avenue and Vandike Street were later condemned.

Over the next two weeks, residents of nearby Tacony visited their branch library to look over old maps of historic creeks and streams - and see whether they lived anywhere near them, library officials said.

Over the same period, the Department of Licenses and Inspections logged 425 calls from homeowners citywide reporting problems ranging from sinking houses to cracked walls - 25 percent more calls than usual.

City officials say the vast majority of homeowners have no cause for worry.

"There's a real problem in the Hegerman Street area. There was a real problem in Logan, and maybe there are other areas in the city that have real problems," said Michael Nadol, deputy commissioner of the Water Department. "But many other areas of the city don't. You'd hate to see people go into a panic mode over things that don't exist."

Nadol said most of the sewer system is sound. Moreover, none of the creeks filled in over the last century or more poses a threat today, he said. They are dry or flowing safely through sewers, he said.

But department engineers are less certain about what neighborhoods are at risk because of inadequate fill. That can be an important factor in the stability of a developed area.

In Logan, the 1920s-era houses sank into ash and cinder that filled the Wingohocking Creek after its flow was diverted into sewers. The weight of houses cracked water and sewer connections, exposing the fill to the eroding influence of water - a phenomenon known as subsidence.

In Wissinoming, too, water eroded the ash fill.

No government agency has tried to determine which blocks were built atop fill - or what kind of material was used. Those built on soil exhibit fewer problems.

City officials expressed concern that such a survey could end up hurting real estate values and stigmatizing neighborhoods.

"I imagine they're probably financially scared to death," said Harry Higgins, who teaches at Temple University's Real Estate Institute. "Suppose their worst fears are confirmed. Now they have the responsibility of disclosing this. Talk about a Pandora's box."

But inaction can also have consequences.

Anne Whiston Spirn, professor of landscape architecture and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania, documented a correlation between vacant land and old creeks in Boston, another city where many waterways were filled.

While teaching at Harvard in the 1980s, Spirn was asked by community leaders to examine Boston's Dudley Street neighborhood - 30 percent of which was vacant.

She determined that the neighborhood had been built atop a filled-in flood plain. There were few vacant lots on hilltops and hillsides. But in low-lying areas, entire blocks were empty because flooding and related problems had driven people out.

"Everyone thought the vacant lots were due to arson," said Spirn, who has also studied the Mill Creek sewer in West Philadelphia. "They just weren't connecting the vacancies to one of the root causes: that these areas should never have been developed in the first place."

Philadelphia is not unique in its approach to the problem, she said.

"These are problems that most people and most cities have not really been aware of," Spirn said. "They are treated as isolated incidents when they happen - when homes fall in."

Who in the city would head a survey of at-risk neighborhoods?

The Planning Commission?

"That's not what we do here," director Barbara Kaplan said.

The Water Department?

"That's not what this department does," Nadol said. Such an initiative can come from only one place, Kaplan said - the Mayor's Office.

For its part, the Water Department had begun working before Wissinoming to computerize decades-old creek maps and consult excavation records to identify areas built on fill. But the inquiry will not try to identify sinking neighborhoods.

The information is being gathered for the limited purpose of determining where to take precautions before tearing up streets for water or sewer projects.

Spirn and Higgins said that pointing a finger at the city would be wrong without asking homeowners, appraisers and mortgage lenders to take responsibility for learning about below-ground hazards.

Yet Philadelphia could set a nationwide example for local action on the issue, Spirn said. For starters, the city could pursue federal grants to map flood plains and then lobby the government to recognize the classifications, she said.

That way, property owners - unprotected against the sinking of houses by traditional homeowners' insurance - might qualify for federal flood insurance.

"It's a blind spot in our society," Spirn said. "Should we expect Philadelphia to be better than the other cities? Well, we like to think our city's great. But they could take the lead now. We truly could become a national model."