3 Ways Green City, Clean Waters is the Best Thing since Sliced Bread

As they explained in last week’s post, Philadelphia Water is taking a new approach to stormwater management through its Green City, Clean Waters initiative.

Philadelphia Water isn’t slowing down with initiatives. From a living wall that you can see, to bringing watershed ownership to citizens and cleaner regulations, here’s three ways Philadelphia Water is improving Philly waterways.

3 Ways Philadelphia Water is Improving Stormwater Through Green City, Clean Waters

1. Living Wall at 3^rd and Walnut

Our “living wall” along 3^rd Street in Old City is a partnership involving the National Park Service and SHIFT_DESIGN. Acting as a sort of billboard for green infrastructure, this installation collects rain water from the Department of Interior building’s roof in a series of above-ground cisterns.

Using solar power, the water is then pumped up an irrigation line that keeps a series of 70 planters containing native Pennsylvania plants moist. Read more about the living wall here.

2. New Storm Drain Marking Campaign

While not directly related to green tools, our storm drains—inlets located along streets that allow stormwater to flow into sewers—are import pieces of infrastructure that act as direct connections between neighborhoods and nearby rivers and streams. To drive home the concept that storm drains lead directly to wildlife habitats and drinking water sources, we’re introducing new storm drain markers that name which of the city’s seven watersheds a drain feeds into. The markers also feature aquatic wildlife found in the watershed.

If you’re interested in getting these new markers for your neighborhood, click here to receive a free kit and installation instructions.

3. Stormwater Regulations

Philadelphia Water is constantly looking for new opportunities to incorporate Green City, Clean Waters tools into projects such as park and schoolyard renovations and streetscape improvements. However, even if we included green tools in every public works project, it wouldn’t be enough to meet our goals. We need to include the development community so that new private construction projects also do their part to cut stormwater pollution. That’s the goal of our new stormwater regulations, which launched in July after extensive outreach to private developers.

In essence, these new regulations call for projects that meet certain criteria to manage more stormwater on-site rather than simply funneling the water directly from roofs and driveways into sewers. To streamline the adaptation of the new requirements, we also launched a new, award-winning website that makes the regulations manual searchable and shareable. You can read about the new regulations and explore the stormwater regulations site.