Infrastructure

The Stormwater Management Incentives Program (SMIP) was created to help businesses and non-profits green large, impervious properties and unburden the city's sewer system from high volumes of stormwater runoff....

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....

Before the Philadelphia Water Department constructed a stormwater wetland at Saylor Grove in Fairmount Park, the area received an excessive amount of runoff that drained into Monoshone Creek, a tributary to the Wissahickon, resulting in erosion of the Monoshone and impaired water quality....

The Philadelphia Water Department is working with Itron, a company that specializes in automatic meter readers, to upgrade water meters citywide over the next two years....

You can argue that the biggest win for Philadelphia's watersheds in 2011 wasn't a tangible project such as a rain garden, stream restoration, green roof or porous street—it was the approval of PWD's Green City, Clean Waters plan....

In April, the City of Philadelphia unveiled its first solar photovoltaic system (above), located at PWD's Southeast Water Pollution Control Plant....

In June, the city's first porous street debuted in South Philadelphia. The 800 block of Percy Street is just six feet wide, but the replacement of traditional impervious asphalt with a porous surface has already had a big impact:...

PWD's Watersheds blog closes out the year with a list of 11 green missions accomplished in 2011, from innovative stormwater management projects and stream restorations to groundbreaking policy agreements and energy-generating solar arrays....

Merry Christmas—and remember that good things come in small packages. Such is the case for PWD's green roof bus shelter demonstration project at 15th and Market streets....

Philadelphia's first stormwater bumpouts debuted this summer on Queen Lane in East Falls. Stormwater bumpouts are just one of PWD's green stormwater infrastructure tools to reduce runoff and prevent combined sewer overflows into our rivers and streams....