Addressing Philly’s stormwater issues

Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer included a Page 1 story about the city’s plans to deal with stormwater over the next two decades. Currently, whenever it rains, the volume overwhelms the city’s infrastructure, and both the storm runoff and untreated sewage flow straight into the Delaware, the Schuylkill and other creeks and rivers. A major culprit is impervious surface (such as sidewalks, rooftops, roads and parking lots, where water can’t enter the ground).

Temple wasn’t mentioned in the story, but this is an area  that faculty researchers are actively engaged in improving, locally and nationally. The  cover story of the current Temple Review — which arrived in homes in early September — is  about the  Civil and Environmental Engineering Department‘s work in this area. The article, “Physicians for the Planet,”  talks about the department’s development of new water treatment methods (such as using ultrasound to destroy minute contaminants) and the kinds of porous surfaces mentioned in the Inquirer article (one called PlastiSoil uses recycled plastic bottles to strengthen the ground beneath asphalt and pavement).

The Center for Sustainable Communities, which is part of the (newly named) School of Environmental Design, also is working on solutions and strategies for stormwater management. A story in the fall 2008 issue of the Temple Review (PDF), “Mapping out a Future We Can Live With” (page 24) talks about the CDC’s work in sustainable land use and floodplain mapping (FEMA adopted the maps Temple researchers generated).

Tags: Center for Sustainable Communities, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, media, news, Philadelphia Inquirer, stormwater, Temple Review