Billions of gallons of sewage flowed through Philadelphia waterways in 1 year, analysis finds
Nearly 14 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater flowed through Philadelphia's creeks, past neighborhoods, parks and playgrounds filled with children, and into the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers during a one-year span, according to data analyzed by CBS News Philadelphia.
This analysis was part of a collaborative reporting project by CBS News and Stations to examine how climate change is impacting local rivers across the country and discover what solutions are available to keep rivers healthy.
Among CBS News Philadelphia's findings, many neighborhoods that experience these large flows of sewage are also some of the most economically challenged in the city, according to environmental experts.
Close to 2 billion gallons of polluted water poured into the confluence of Frankford and Tacony creeks in Philadelphia's Juniata Park between July 2023 and June 2024, the most recent year of data collected by the Philadelphia Water Department.
In August 2009, Dr. Katera Moore, Ph.D, took her two children to watch all the sewage and stormwater pass through the creeks following a storm.
She posted a video of the experience on YouTube.
"[It's] kind of amazing, like astounding, because you're seeing gushing water!" Moore said. "It was fun, but it was also not fun because that's not supposed to happen."
Yet nearly 16 years later, it's still happening.
Tina Ridgway works with children at the nearby Ferko Playground recreation center, and she said many of them struggle to have fun because of the smell.
"It smells like a bathroom!" Ridgway said. "It just smells like someone dumped their toilet into the [creeks]."
The source of all the billions of gallons of sewage and stormwater flowing through the Frankford and Tacony can be spotted pretty quickly due to its hulking size.
Right next to where the two creeks converge is a large portal that looks like a train tunnel. It measures 24-feet across and 21-feet high, and is a major part of Philadelphia's combined sewer system.
According to the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), about 60% of the city, including some of its oldest neighborhoods, is served by this system.
In a combined sewer system, wastewater from homes and stormwater collect into a single underground pipe, which snakes its way all across the city.
The pipe eventually connects with Philadelphia's wastewater treatment plants, which treat that polluted water before safely releasing it back into the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers.
But when it starts to rain heavily, it could overload the system and potentially force contaminated water back up into people's homes.
To prevent that, 164 pipes, called outfalls, are scattered throughout the city to divert the extra water.
However, the pipes send all that water, which is untreated and filled with contaminants, into the city's creeks and rivers.
This sequence of events is known as a combined sewer overflow (CSO).
Maria Horowitz, who works at PWD, said the sewer system's outdated design principles can lead to a CSO event.
"The system gets overloaded, and the system can't handle these high-intensity rains," Horowitz said. "It's built to discharge, so we don't flood the city. We don't want to flood people's homes."
The PWD said the city's drinking water is safe because CSOs occur downstream from the sections of the Delaware and Schuylkill where the department collects its drinking water.
Maya van Rossum, who runs the environmental advocacy nonprofit Delaware Riverkeeper Network, said when polluted water spills from outfalls, it can make the water dangerous, especially for young people in Philadelphia's most economically challenged neighborhoods who may hang out and swim in the city's creeks.
"They're swimming in the water, they're engaging with the water, they ingest that, you could have gastrointestinal issues. There were potentially issues with hepatitis," van Rossum said. "I think it's offensive. I think it's incredibly, incredibly sad."
CSOs can also be deadly to marine life, including fish.
In August 2020, the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection found evidence of dead fish in Cobbs Creek following a CSO spill.
"We should not be condoning the discharge of raw sewage and toilet paper and feces into our natural systems," van Rossum said.
Except, by law, CSO spills are almost always allowed.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection said PWD can have CSO spills during rainy days.
The PWD allows Philadelphians to track CSO spills in real-time on its CSOcast digital map.
Marc Cammarata, a PWD deputy water commissioner, warned the city could see more spills due to climate change.
"More intense rainfall events [are] really stressing out what is an aged asset system we have here," Cammarata said. "You can see them. You can smell them. They're unsightly, and it's something that needs to be rectified."
The city is in the middle of implementing "Green City, Clean Waters," a 25-year, $2.4 billion plan to prevent too much stormwater from flowing into its system.
PWD is installing thousands of pieces of green infrastructure throughout the city, including a bumpout, which juts out from a street curb and uses plants and stones to filter and capture rainwater before it enters the sewers.
Horowitz said the completed pieces of infrastructure have already prevented 3 billion gallons of polluted water a year from pouring into the city's waterways.
However, van Rossum pointed out that despite the program, billions of gallons of untreated sewage and polluted stormwater were pouring into the city's rivers and waterways.
"That's not solving the problem," van Rossum said. "It's not solving it in a meaningful way."
Horowitz cautioned that separating Philadelphia's stormwater and sewage pipes would involve tearing up streets, disrupting daily life and costing customers billions of dollars.
"Behind the scenes, it's a very tenuous conversation about which areas, what we should replace, and what are our priorities." Horowitz said. "We definitely can't do them all in one shot."
Moore hopes the conversation will broaden to a larger audience and bring attention to an often obscure topic.
"You're going about your life," Moore said. "You're not really paying attention to some of these things, but kind of understanding that these things matter."
