Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, Inc.
Julie Slavet, Executive Director
Statement supporting the EPA and Army Corps proposed rule clarifying streams and wetlands protected under the Clean Water Act
August 6, 2014
Cosmic Café, Philadelphia
My name is Julie Slavet, and I have the honor of serving as the Executive Director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership (TTF). I am so proud to be here today with EPA Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for Environmental Assessment and Innovation and Philadelphia Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown, our partners from Clean Water Action and the Sustainable Business Network, and representatives of the American Sustainable Business Council and Philadelphia Brewing Company.
Our mission is to improve the health of our 30 square mile urban watershed by engaging our six watershed communities — Philadelphia, Cheltenham, Abington, Jenkintown, Rockledge, and Springfield — in education, stewardship, restoration, and advocacy.
With its headwaters and twenty one miles of streams located upstream in Montgomery County, the TTF creek flows through Philadelphia and into the Delaware River, one of the two sources of drinking water for the people of our city. Both upstream and in Philadelphia, we work with our municipal partners to make on-the-ground improvements to our waterways, from planting creekside buffers in Abington and Cheltenham to installing rain gardens in Philadelphia’s Germantown and Olney neighborhoods.
We see firsthand the importance of small streams and wetlands to the health of our rivers and in mitigating flooding and runoff, while creating habitat. That’s why we have planted a number of riparian buffers along the critical, small Baeder Creek, Tookany Creek, and Rock Creek — and are proud to have recently received funding for creek buffers and wetland creation at the headwaters of the Jenkintown Creek for this coming year.
TTF supports the Clean Water Rule because it clarifies what has been scientifically proven to be true: that small waters upstream impact the health of waterways downstream.
Thank you.
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