TTF has been partnering with Artology this summer, helping students merge science and art as they explore water through the use of different artistic media. On Friday, Artology students showcased their work at the vacant lot on the corner of Clearview Street and Washington Lane in our Awbury/Cliveden Model Neighborhood. The students created an artistic rain garden by “planting” their own abstract sculptures modeled on plants they had encountered near local waterways. During the party, students gave community members very informative and entertaining tours of their work. TTF is working on turning this space into a real rain garden, but for now, neighbors can enjoy Artology students’ amazing creative expression!

View more photos from this event in this Flickr set.

Drop-Off Your Household Hazardous Waste

Containers marked Toxic, Flammable, Corrosive or Reactive don’t belong in your house or in the regular trash. They’re dangerous! Let the City dispose of them for you during this Saturday’s scheduled drop-off for Household Hazardous Waste (HHW). Bring those old cans of oil-based paint, solvents, pesticides, antifreeze, petroleum products, car batteries–even old computers—to the Transfer Station at Domino Lane and Umbria Street in Northwest Philadelphia between 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM. We’ll take them off your hands at no charge. Spread the word to your friends and everyone on your Philly Spring Cleanup contact list as well.

For details on what is considered HHW and what isn’t, and for upcoming drop-off dates and locations, go to PhiladelphiaStreets.com/HHW.

This service of the Sanitation Division of the Philadelphia Streets Department is funded in part by the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.

This time, the project was led by two dynamic leaders from Delaware Valley Earth Force’s Youth Leaders team. Throughout the day, Wyncote students helped in each stage of the planting, with the final result being a beautiful garden of all native plants for local birds — and people! — to enjoy.

Here are some photos from the day, courtesy of Delaware Valley Earth Force. Below, Barb Duffy from the Cheltenham Environmental Advisory Council demonstrates proper planting techniques to some very helpful student participants.

You can view more photos from the day in this Flickr set.

A CALL FOR ARTISTS!

Friends of the Manayunk Canal & the Schuylkill Project, thanks to funding from WREN, is looking for artists interesting in blending art and conservation. The Art on a Rain Barrel Design Contest is open to any adult or child willing to exercise their creativity on behalf of water conservation and stewardship! Artists wishing to enter the Art on a Rain Barrel Design Contest must submit a registration form and a sketch of their proposed rain barrel design by Friday, June 30, 2010 to fmc@manayunkcanal.org.

Our expert panelists will choose the top design sketches from the registrants for inclusion in the Art on a Rain Barrel Design Contest. Artists whose sketches are chosen to participate in the contest will receive a rain barrel (a $150 value) to keep. Notification will be provided to the artists of the designs selected by the judges to participate in the contest by July 16th and rain barrel distribution will begin on July 19th. Artists will have until August 20, 2010 to complete their designs and return the rain barrels for judging. The completed rain barrel designs will then be installed along Main Street in Manayunk for thousands to see and vote on.

Artists are expected to be present at the EcoArts Festival on September 26, 2010 on Main Street in Manayunk for the announcement of the winners, who in addition to receiving a rain barrel will also win a generous prize basket stuffed with local goods.

We will be holding a refundable deposit for each rain barrel distributed to participants to insure that rain barrels are returned for the contest. Remember registration forms and a sketch of your proposed design must be submitted by June 30, 2010 to fmc@manayunkcanal.org in order for your design to be considered for the contest.

Not an artist? Visit www.manayunkcanal.org to sign up for one of the Do-It-Yourself Rain Barrel Workshops in October, where for $25 you can walk away with your own 100% recycled rain barrel as well as learning how to install, maintain and use your rain barrel!

Thursday, October 14 & 28, 6:30-8:00pm
Art of Recycling Rain Do It Yourself Barrel Workshops
(Location: Tenatively Venice Island Recreation Center)

Friends of the Manayunk Canal & the Schuylkill Project, thanks to funding from WREN, will be engaging the public to act with interactive do-it-yourself rain barrel workshops. For a $25 registration fee, workshops participants will not only receive a 100 percent recycled rain barrel of their own, they will also learn how to install, maintain and use their rain barrels. Additionally, workshop participants will be empowered with the tools they need to tackle other simple stormwater controls at home, like how to build a rain garden.

Email us at fmc@manayunkcanal.org to register for one of the Do-It-Yourself Rain Barrel Workshops in October, where for $25 you can walk away with your own 100% recycled rain barrel as well as learn how to install, maintain and use your rain barrel! Tickets will be first come, first serve.

American Rivers Names Upper Delaware River Most Endangered in U.S.

Philadelphia Leaders to DRBC: Cease Construction on Exploratory Wells; Deny Water Withdrawal, Drilling Permits

Industry Response:  Unconventional Drilling, Conventional Obfuscation Strategies

Iris Marie Bloom

Philadelphia:  June 3, 2010

The Upper Delaware River, the drinking water source for 17 million people across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, is at risk from shale fracking for natural gas, a process that poisons groundwater and creates toxic pollution.  This threat landed the Upper Delaware in the number one spot in America’s Most Endangered Rivers 2010, a report released yesterday by the national nonprofit group American Rivers.

In Philadelphia yesterday, American Rivers spokesperson Liz Garland opened a press conference at City Hall, “In shining the spotlight on gas drilling in the Upper Delaware River, we chose a time when preventive action is still possible.  The Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) is making major decisions right now which will affect the fate of this river, and the people who drink this water have a chance to weigh in on that decision.”

Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, said, “The Delaware River is the longest free flowing river east of the Mississippi, much of it designated Wild and Scenic.  Many, many people have worked and billions of dollars have been spent to bring the Delaware back to life after decades of abuse.  As we face the advent of gas drilling in the Upper Delaware River Watershed, we face the possibility of losing everything.”

Philadelphia City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who introduced a successful resolution earlier this spring calling on the DRBC to ban shale gas drilling until an Environmental Impact Statement is assessed for the Delaware River Watershed, drew parallels to the Gulf disaster. “The BP rig which blew up was an exploratory well.  It had special exemptions.  We have to learn something from this.  The DRBC is exempting exploratory wells right here in our watershed, which supplies our drinking water.  The have to stop letting companies drill without a DRBC permit, and they should deny the Stone Energy water withdrawal permit, and all drilling-related permits, until we have the Environmental Impact Statement.  We don’t need a disaster here.”

Albert Appleton, former Commissioner of New York City Department of Environmental Protection, asserted, “If the true environmental costs, including construction, extraction, and cleanup, were included in the cost of drilling, this fossil fuel would be unaffordable and drilling impractical.  This is not something we need, and it’s not something we want.  This stuff is not clean-burning at all.  This is not green, and if it goes forward, it will make it even harder to get to the green energy economy.  We can build that economy right now.  We are being asked to risk our clean water, environment, and public health, and for what?”

“If the Delaware River Basin Commission does not carry out its mandate to protect the waters of the Delaware River, New York and Pennsylvania will have an economic, social, and public health disaster of unprecedented dimension,” Appleton concluded.

After elected representative, officials, and professional environmentalists concluded their remarks, community leaders had their say.  “As we know from the coal mine and Gulf disasters, accidents happen, particularly when short cuts are taken to increase profits, and those accidents will endanger Philadelphia’s drinking water,” commented Gerry Kaufman, a spokesman for Protecting Our Waters.

Dennis Mulligan, a lawyer, commented, “BP said the environmental damage in the Gulf of Mexico would be ‘very, very modest,’ and the gas companies are giving us the same empty assurances.  We don’t want bottled water advisories telling us we might not want to drink our tap water, as already happened in Pittsburgh due to Marcellus Shale waste.”  Mulligan lives near the Delaware River in New Jersey and directs a agency serving immigrants and refugees in Philadelphia: “I count on clean Delawre River water in both states,” he said.

Reverend Jesse Brown, a longtime public health advocate, emphasized, “This gas drilling presents an unacceptable risk to public health, and it also puts us on exactly the wrong road: extracting even more fossil fuel instead of investing in renewable energy.”

“Let’s wait til the studies are in,” concluded speaker after speaker at Philadelphia’s press conference responding to the American Rivers designation yesterday.  State Representative Gregory S. Vitali, Philadelphia Water Department Director of Watersheds Howard Neukrug, Cliff Westfall of Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, Jim Black of Clean Air Council, and Robert J. Ryan, Ph.D, P.E., of Temple University’s Civil and Environmental Engineering Department, also spoke.

Unconventional Drilling, Conventional Obfuscation Strategies

Gas industry public relations spokespeople responded to the designation of the Upper Delaware River as endangered by providing assurances of the industry’s long experience and clean record.

“I don’t know how they can conclude that, when hydraulic fracturing has never harmed a drop of drinking water,” said Jim Smith, spokesman for the Independent Oil and Gas Association of New York. “In 60 years of hydraulic fracturing across the country, more than a million wells have been fracked, including 14,000 in New York,” he said in a Times-Leader story by Mary Esch on June 2.

In fact, the Pennsylvania DEP slapped a $240,000 fine on Cabot Oil and Gas for contaminating drinking water in Dimock, PA, this spring.  Cabot was ordered to cap several wells and provide drinking water permanently for fourteen of the affected families, who had been forced to buy their own drinking water for over a year after unconventional gas drilling began.  The DEP action was one of the most punitive in Pennsylvania history.

Last year, a New York Times series documented hundreds of incidents of water contaminated due to drilling; ProPublica and Toxics Targeting have also reported on water contamination incidents.  Filmmaker Josh Fox’s documentary, GASLANDS, shows health impacts from gas drilling out West and in Pennsylvania.  Because the industry is exempt from major provisions of federal environmental regulations including the Clean Water Act, Clean Air Act, Superfund Law, Safe Drinking Water Act, and wastewater treatment laws, the EPA has had difficulty studying the safety of hydraulic fracturing.  The EPA has now launched a new two-year study of hydraulic fracturing, acknowledging that their 2004 study, which only looked at fracturing in shallow, or conventional, formations, was flawed.

The industry claim that “we’ve been fracturing for 60 years” is technically true but clearly designed to obfuscate a more important truth.  Fracturing in unconventional formations such as shale only began in 2002, and only began in earnest after the Halliburton Loophole of 2005 granted the industry multiple exemptions from federal environmental laws.  Compared to conventional drilling, unconventional gas drilling uses about 67 times more water and toxic chemicals, and the flowback waste from deep underground is much more dangerous and difficult to treat.  Unlike conventional brine, flowback contains, in addition to the original toxic fracturing chemicals, arsenic, Radium 226, and is five times saltier than the ocean due to ancient ocean deposits underground.

Because much of the toxic contamination comes from inevitable spills and accidents, creating fish kills and wildlife deaths as well as long-term contamination of streams and wetlands, the industry public relations spokespeople parrot the phrase, “hydraulic fracturing,” to mean the fracturing process itself rather than other aspects including fracking chemicals transportation, mixing, other stages of drilling, flaring, waste storage, flowback reuse, transportation, and disposal.  Aside from direct toxic chemical contamination and methane migration, there are cumulative negative environmental impacts to air, climate, land, and ecosystems as a whole.

The industry’s success in winning exemptions, delaying studies, and ensuring that permits are expedited at breakneck speed in Pennsylvania has puzzled some.   Common Cause released a study, “Deep Drilling, Deep Pockets,” on May 11, 2010, elaborating on the campaign contributions and lobbying expenditures of the natural gas industry in Pennsylvania.  The report sheds light on the industry’s sheer might.

“This industry has an enormous financial incentive to exaggerate their confidence, minimize risk, and provide unrealistic assurances to the public,” commented Brady Russell, another of the speakers in Philadelphia yesterday.  Russell, Director of Clean Water Action’s southeastern Pennsylvania office, gave an anecdote of receiving a public rebuttal from a Chesapeake Energy spokesperson who said that Russel’s account of the 17 cows who died in Louisiana after drinking fracking fluid was wrong.  “That wasn’t fracking fluid, that was ethylene glycol,” the Chesapeake Energy spokesman claimed.

Brady Russell, being a fact-checker, went back and did his research.  Official Louisiana state documents showed that the cows died, bellowing and bleeding from the mouth, after drinking fracking fluid.

In Pennsylvania, farmers in Clearville and Hickory have reported losing over 100 head of cattle due to drilling operations (Weekly Press, April 2010: “Shale Shame.”  Out  West, veterinarians and ranchers report losses of goats, and mares have difficulty reproducing due to the endocrine disrupting impacts from gas drilling (Amy Mall, NRDC columnist; GASLANDS footage).  In Dimock, Norma Fiorentino reported that local wildlife disappeared after drilling started.  “They’ve all left, rabbits, deer, they’re all gone from here now,” she told a reporter last month, on May 15th.

Senator Casey, Congressman Sestak Speak Up for Delaware River

Senator Bob Casey, co-sponsor of the FRAC Act, a bill which would restore the Safe Drinking Water Act and require drilling companies to disclose exactly which chemicals they are using and injecting underground to fracture the shale, releasing natural gas, sent a representative, Kurt Imhof, to the gathering.  Congressman Joe Sestak issued a statement, which read in part:

“I would first like to commend the work of American Rivers, Protecting Our Waters, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability for their efforts to educate the public on this important issue.  The Commonwealth is blessed with an abundance of natural resources. We should never have to sacrifice our health and safety, clean air and water, natural lands, and communities to companies seeking access to our natural wealth. I applaud efforts, such as this, to bring to light the very real risks of underregulated development.  I am not convinced we currently have strong enough environmental, health, and property safeguards — and I am not satisfied that people will have the access to just compensation should even the best safeguards fail.”

On Wednesday, June 2, American Rivers, a national environmental organization based in Washington, D.C., will launch a campaign to protect the Upper Delaware River.  This river system provides drinking water for 17 million people, including Philadelphia.  It is also valued for its biodiversity and beauty.  Three events this week will highlight the threat to the Upper Delaware River, now at risk due to imminent gas drilling.  Drilling companies plan to hydrofrack thousands of wells within the watershed.

The Philadelphia press conference takes place at 12 noon Wednesday at City Hall, Fourth Floor Caucus Room.
 
It is preceded by an event in Narrowsburg, NY at 11 AM.  American Rivers will also hold an event in Washington, D.C. on June 4th regarding the state of the nation’s rivers.
 
In Philadelphia, City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, who earlier introduced a successful City Council resolution calling for a ban on gas drilling in the watershed until an Environmental Impact Statement is assessed, will speak.  Albert F. Appleton, internationally respected water systems expert, former Commissioner of New York City DEP and former director of NYC Water and Sewer systems, will speak, along with PA State Rep. Gregory S. Vitali of the 166th Legislative District Delaware County, Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown of the 190th Legislative District, Philadelphia County, and Howard Neukrug, Director, Philadelphia Water Department Office of Watersheds.  Community and faith-based leaders, including Reverend Nate Walker and Reverend Jesse Brown, along with environmental groups including Delaware Riverkeeper Network, Protecting Our Waters, Clean Air Council, Damascus Citizens, Clean Water Action, and PennEnvironment, will urge action from citizens and policymakers to protect the Delaware River.
 
In Narrowsburg at 11 AM on June 2nd, at the town Gazebo overlooking the Upper Delaware River, the following speakers will focus attention on the threatened river: Congressman Maurice Hinchey, representing the 22nd District of New York; Marcia Nehemiah, representing Damascus Citizens for Sustainability; Ramsay Adams, Executive Director of Catskill Mountainkeepers; Sean McGuinness National Park Superintendent of the Upper Delaware Scenic and Recreational River; and Bruce Ferguson of Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy.

###
 
American Rivers is the leading national organization standing up for healthy rivers so communities can thrive. American Rivers protects and restores America’s rivers for the benefit of people, wildlife and nature. Founded in 1973, American Rivers has more than 65,000 members and supporters, with offices in Washington, DC and nationwide. Visit www.AmericanRivers.org

Contact:
Amy Kober, American Rivers, 206-898-3864
Patrick Carullo, Damascus Citizens for Sustainability, 570-685-8774
Tracy Carluccio, Delaware Riverkeeper Network, 215-369-1188 x 104
Iris Marie Bloom, Protecting Our Waters, 215-840-6489

The event was inspiring. It was great to see so many environmental and community organizations working together to celebrate our city and help it become as sustainable as possible. Often times, in a big city with an old infrastructure like Philadelphia, it can seem like positive environmental change happens very, very slowly. We hear the complaints all the time: “Nothing is happening!” “Where are my tax dollars going?” “Why isn’t Philadelphia as ‘green’ as other cities?”

Well, change IS happening all around us. It will take some time, but Philadelphia has already made some really great strides in the realm of greening. Read the report here and check out all the amazing progress that’s been made citywide in just one year!

This article from the Philadelphia Daily News spells out some of the achievements:

Divert 70 percent of solid waste from landfills - In other words, increase the recycling rate. And it is ticking up. Over the past year, the diversion rate was 16 percent of waste, compared with 12 percent during the previous year. Officials expect it to go even higher now that the recycling-rewards program is set to go citywide.

Provide park and recreation space within 10 minutes of 75 percent of residents – The plan is to add 500 acres of public space. Gajewski said the city is working with neighborhoods to figure out what they want.

Plant 300,000 trees – This is one of the more ambitious goals. Since Greenworks started, 2,846 trees have been planted. In April, the Department of Parks and Recreation kicked off a tree-planting campaign called “Green Philly, Grow Philly.” It is seeking partnerships with private businesses, nonprofits and other organizations to increase the number of trees. But Nutter last week said he would cut $2.5 million the city budgeted to tree-planting, due to financial constraints, which will undoubtedly slow this effort.

Double the number of green jobs – Last year, the city said it wanted to increase the number of green jobs – loosely defined as jobs with an environmental benefit – from 14,379 to 28,800. So far, it has created at least 520 jobs, largely through stimulus funding for types of construction work.

Of course, here at TTF, we are most excited by all the great progress made in the arena of stormwater management, thanks in large part to the Philadelphia Water Department’s Green City, Clean Waters plan. We’re looking forward to the 2011 progress report. In the mean time, we’ll keep doing our part to help make Philadelphia the greenest city in the country!

The Ogontz Ave Revitalization Corporation (OARC) supplied residents with energy saving devices for their homes, great food, upbeat music and a host of incredible opportunities form local utilities and organizations. With the beautiful weather, fun giveaways and great information, a good time was had by all.

TTF, thanks to generous donations from GoodLife bottles and Klean Kanteen was able to raffle off 30 reusable stainless steel water bottles so that residents of Clearview Street can model sustainable behaviors. TTF also installed rain barrels on a handful of homes to increase stormwater retention and raise awareness of watershed issues.

Contact OARC for more information on being Urban Energy Block:

1536 Haines Street
Philadelphia, PA 19126
Tel: (215) 549-9462

Check out some of our photos from the event:

See more photos from the event in this Flickr set.

Remember: In just two short weeks Clearview Street will be energy efficiency upgrades along with a huge celebration as part of OARC’s Urban Energy Conservation Program. Keep checking back for more information events and information on Clearview Street!

This Arbor Day TTF worked with the Roosevelt Middle School and planted over 150 seedlings on their campus! All of our wonderful helpers also took home a tree to plant at their house. Get inspired by these enthusiastic young kids and plant a tree in your neighborhood!