Philadelphia’s Water Revitalization Plan is underway
The Water Department’s 25-year project will improve the pipes, treatment plants, and processes that residents rely on for safe drinking water. Not all neighbors are happy.
Following a planning process and public listening sessions, the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) is beginning the first phases of its plan to modernize the city’s drinking water infrastructure, which was built over a century ago.
The Water Revitalization Plan, estimated to cost around $2.5 billion, includes about 400 improvement and construction projects to ensure that the city can deliver safe, reliable drinking water for the next 50 years and beyond, according to the Water Department.
“We are bringing facilities that were built decades ago into current times, with new technologies, efficiencies, and ways to make our drinking water system more resilient in the face of incidences like flooding from climate change or last year’s chemical spill in the Delaware,” said PWD spokesperson Brian Rademaekers.
Philadelphia became one of the first U.S. cities with a public drinking water system, providing residents with water from the Schuylkill River since 1801. Around a century later, the Delaware River also became a drinking water source, contributing to half of the city’s overall supply today. The Water Department made significant upgrades and additions to the system’s facilities in the 1950s and ‘60s, which Rademaekers says are reaching the end of their expected service life.
Three water treatment plants – Baxter in Northeast Philadelphia, Queen Lane in East Falls, and Belmont in West Philadelphia- now treat some 230 million gallons of water for 1.7 million residents every day.
In 2023, a spill from a chemical plant into the Delaware River exposed a key vulnerability to Philadelphia’s drinking water system. While the contamination never entered the Baxter treatment plant, the city currently cannot switch water sources and serve all customers from a single river in the event of a future emergency.
The Water Revitalization Plan’s capstone projects include upgrading the Belmont and Queen Lane treatment plants on the Schuylkill and building a new pipe to connect the two, which will allow the city to draw water exclusively from one river if necessary.
“We will be able to provide the entire city with drinking water from either river indefinitely, should something happen to one of our sources,” Rademaekers said.
Construction for the large-scale tunnel project, called Schuylkill Crossing, is expected to begin in 2026.
Other upgrades to the Baxter and Belmont treatment plants include reducing disinfectant chemicals during the treatment process and replacing it with ultraviolet (UV) light to kill microorganisms, as well as increasing the plants’ storage capacities.
The Queen Lane plant in East Falls, which was built in 1895, will be demolished and completely rebuilt with upgraded treatment technologies.
A multimillion-dollar loan from the federal government’s Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (WIFIA) will jumpstart the work, and the Water Department is “aggressively seeking grant funding,” said PWD Program Manager Jesse Debes.
However, it will ultimately be Philadelphia residents who will foot the bill for the water system’s upgrades. “How that will impact ratepayers going forward is something that will be determined in public rate cases,” Debes said.
The PWD held public listening sessions throughout the city in the spring to communicate with residents about how the Water Revitalization Plan might impact their wallets and to address other concerns. Rademaekers said conversations with community members are ongoing as projects progress, and members of the Stakeholder Advisory Group will serve as liaisons between the Water Department and neighbors.
Debes emphasized that investing in the system now will protect customers’ drinking water for generations to come.
“The alternative to this plan is replacing assets, in-kind, as they fail,” Debes said. “We’ve done the analysis of what that would cost, and it proved more beneficial to implement this plan now, rather than to have the same conversation in 25 years, with no idea what the economy will look like.”
East Falls neighbors want more input
Not all neighbors are on board with how the city is moving forward with its water revitalization plans.
Members of the East Falls Community Council have asked the city for a written guarantee that residents will have a say about how reconstruction of the Queen Lane Water Treatment Plant will affect its surrounding neighborhoods.
City officials said planning and construction of the plant won’t begin until 2035, but some neighbors say that they deserve to be a part of the planning process.
“As a community, we’re very much open to change and improvements, but you’ve got to find that ground where everyone can collaborate,” said Hilary Langer, an architect and chair of the East Falls council’s zoning committee. “You don’t start talking to community members when the shovel goes in the ground; you start talking now.”
In May, Philadelphia City Council approved legislation sponsored by Councilmember Curtis Jones, Jr., to change the zoning of the 110-acre Queen Lane Water Treatment Plant from Residential to Civic Use. The new zoning allows the city to move forward with its reconstruction plans without requiring input from East Falls neighbors. The new zoning bill included some amendments like community protections for landscaping, fencing, lighting, and driveways.
But Langer said that the bill did not include stronger amendments requested by the group, such as stronger provisions for landscaping buffers and maintenance. Langer said the city has ignored requests for a binding agreement for future collaboration between the PWD and the community council on the project as it progresses.
“PWD worked for many months with Councilmember Jones on amendments to the corrective zoning bill to address the residents’ concerns. We continue to work with the East Falls Community Council and other neighbors not affiliated with the EFCC, listening to, and addressing their concerns,” a PWD spokesperson said in an emailed response.
Cover photo: PWD Queen Lane Water Treatment Plant in April 2024 . Photos by Julie Hancher.
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