The Philly Watersheds Blog would like to take a siesta from the incessant posting of spokesdog photos to direct your attention toward a recent post on City Paper’s Naked City blog. Writer Isaiah Thompson asks PWD’s Chris Crockett and Adam Levine: What’s the story behind the little island in the middle of the Schuylkill?
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As you walk on many of Philadelphia’s sidewalks, beneath your feet is a hidden world of streams that once crisscrossed the city.
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2012 marks the bicentennial of the opening of the Fairmount Water Works, Philadelphia’s claim to fame as the first large American city to provide safe water to its residents.
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In case you missed last week’s presentation at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (From Turbines To Tanks, a history of the Fairmount Aquarium by guest speaker Samantha Muka), here’s hard evidence that seals were once among the residents of the Water Works.
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Most people don’t realize that much of the lower part of South Philadelphia was once covered by tidal marshes.
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Our post from earlier this month about American shad ascending the Schuylkill above Norristown for the first time in nearly 200 years contained a fish story of a different sort, as we mentioned that George Washington (pictured above, on the banks of some other river besides the Schuylkill) may have fed his troops Schuylkill shad during trying Revolutionary times.
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This year marks the 100th anniversary of Philadelphia’s water filtration system, completed with the construction of the Queen Lane Filters in 1911.
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Sold-out event tonight at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center: The Breweries of Brewerytown and Vicinity, a presentation by historian Rich Wagner.
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By the end of the 1850s, it was already apparent to Henry P.M. Birkinbine, chief engineer of the Philadelphia Water Department, that the northwestern section of the city—including Roxborough, Manayunk, and Chestnut Hill—would need to be served by its own water works.
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