Water, water everywhere

The federal Clean Water Act created a regulatory system in which the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and state deputies including the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) determine which recreational activities should be available in a particular waterway, and thus to what degree they need to crack down on nearby polluters.

Presently, most attention in Philadelphia is on the Delaware River, where the interstate Delaware River Basin Commission has debated in recent years whether to upgrade the regulatory designation of the stretch of river passing through Philadelphia to match that upstream in Northeast Pennsylvania and downstream in the Delaware Bay. Doing so would require water quality suitable for such “primary contact” recreational activities as swimming and tubing. Environmental groups and some members of City Council, led by Councilmember Mark Squilla, have advocated in support, stating their belief that the river has improved enough in recent decades to warrant a regulatory upgrade. That could force industrial polluters and sewage plants to spend more money on newer treatment methods.

But in 2023, the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) released a study on recreation in the river that reads a bit like a 178-page laundry list of all the reasons it’s not a good idea: regular traffic of huge commercial container ships, powerful currents, floating debris and too few points of ingress and egress chief among them.

“Without the ability to maintain a safe distance from the federal navigation channel, swimmers and paddlers are especially vulnerable to maritime hazards,” the report concluded.

The dynamics are also complicated in smaller Philadelphia waterways like the Wissahickon, where the DEP’s regulations technically say the water doesn’t meet safe pathogen levels for recreation. But in an email, DEP press secretary Neil Shader said the state’s findings do not automatically create legal prohibitions on swimming, which are instead determined by state or local regulations, such as the city’s swimming ban.

Asked about data suggesting that pathogen levels may actually be low enough to safely swim under the right conditions, Shader also said the DEP’s designations are “not appropriate to be used to determine if it is safe to swim,” as data is not collected frequently enough to evaluate changing conditions. Instead, the Pennsylvania Department of Health often regulates public swimming beaches via more regular sampling. But the city conducts no such regimen in the Wissahickon.

Park priorities

Neither federal nor state entities forbid recreation on Philadelphia’s waterways, and, to varying degrees, support adding more of it. This contradiction adds to the frustration of some advocates about the city’s policies and priorities.

Despite data from Riverways Consortium suggesting low levels of E. coli at FDR Park in South Philadelphia, the park’s aging dock, patched with wooden panels and beset by weeds, was not included on the initial list of major repairs and upgrades as part of a $250 million renovation led by the Fairmount Park Conservancy in partnership with Philadelphia Parks & Recreation.

Forbes says a new tide gate installed at the south end of the park in 2024 may have helped lower pathogen levels by keeping out sewage-contaminated river water. But it also appears to have cut off the park’s lake waters from tidal influences, which Riverways believes stagnated the water and contributed to an algal bloom that plagued the lake in the summer of 2024. Similar lakes elsewhere use chemicals or aerators to address such problems.

For its part, the Fairmount Park Conservancy says the tide gate is working to achieve objectives of FDR’s redesign, including reducing flooding, allowing stormwater with pollutants from nearby roadways to flow out of the park and helping to establish a 33-acre tidal wetland. The organization referred further questions about the tide gate to Parks & Recreation and the Philadelphia International Airport, and questions on water quality to state regulators.

Conservancy spokesperson Cari Feiler Bender said the lake’s dock is “safe” and “functional” and that efforts are currently focused on amenities such as basketball, football, and soccer. The organization’s chief of staff, Kevin Roche, adds that renovation plans call for eventually restoring Shedbrook Creek in FDR’s western half, for the first time opening the little-known waterway to activities such as kayaking.

‘The job is never done’

Boating on the Schuylkill is perhaps the city’s most visibly robust form of water-based recreation. But even there, public access points and boat launches remain few and far between. Over the past decade, PWD and Parks & Rec collaborated on two multimillion-dollar projects along the waterfront in Manayunk: one to overhaul a recreational area on Venice Island and another to perform a major restoration of water flow into the Manayunk Canal. Neither facilitated access for on-water recreation.

But, PWD Director Kelly Anderson points out, the two city agencies did support the construction of a new kayak launch in 2021 just downriver in East Falls. The Water Department also created and continues to maintain RiverCast, a website that provides real-time assessments of whether the Schuylkill’s water quality is safe for kayaking and other activities.

“We support recreation where and when it’s safe to do so,” Anderson said.

She also said the department remains committed to reducing combined sewer overflows and that pipes directly polluting parks such as Bartram’s Garden and Tacony Creek Park are “top priorities.” But Anderson says getting all of Philadelphia’s waterways to swimmable standards would cost funding in excess of the billions of dollars it already spends to reduce combined sewers, and may also be beyond PWD’s powers to control, as pollution such as stormwater runoff filters into the rivers from upstream.

“The job is never done,” Anderson said. “But we’re also managing PFAS [“forever chemicals”], right? Also managing climate change. Also managing biosolids. The list goes on and on. … At some point you really have to, you know — thinking about ratepayers — pick what makes the most sense.”

Asked if the Fairmount Park Conservancy — which serves as the city’s primary nonprofit partner with parks along the Schuylkill — ever has conversations about installing more boat launches, Roche demurred. Instead, he suggested perhaps it was time to consider the development of some kind of comprehensive water recreation strategy, by bringing together public and private stakeholders across the city, much like ongoing initiatives for hiking and biking trails.

“I think that’d be a great idea for water-based organizations,” Roche said.

Still, Riverways Director Stefanie Kroll and Tim Dillingham of the American Littoral Society doubt key stakeholders are as interested in increasing public access to the water as they are. For them, the dynamics feel like a far cry from days when Philadelphia spent money to create public bathing areas and staffed Cobbs and Pennypack Creeks with lifeguards, or the contemporary efforts of peer municipalities like Chicago and Washington, D.C., to quickly achieve swimmable and fishable waterways.

“I’m not sympathetic to it at all,” Dillingham said of the argument that water-based recreation is too difficult or expensive to prioritize. “Yes, everyone wants to be cognizant about the impact that [higher utility] rates might have on lower income folks. But for too long, it’s been an excuse to not be aggressive or visionary about how we treat the water.”

Float on

Just where is the ceiling on Philadelphia’s water recreation potential? Other players in the space vacillate between optimism and realism.

Stuart Clarke, manager of the Environment and Public Space program at the William Penn Foundation, says improving water quality around the city and providing increased access and water-based programming are all objectives of the foundation. He sees the right conditions — advocacy, a regulatory framework and federal and state funding sources — to improve water quality and notes the foundation has a grantmaking objective to dramatically reduce combined sewer overflows by 2035. The foundation also provides funding to groups such as Discovery Pathways and Riverways to support their growing programming.

But Clarke’s view isn’t all roses. He acknowledges sewage pollution is just one of several recreation hazards in a river as robust as the Delaware and said he too wonders about the level of interest citywide, particularly among entities “in a position to make investments or prioritize” the issue.

“We’re seeing substantial enthusiasm within the Greater Philadelphia community for this work,” Clarke said. “What I don’t think we see as much as we might is an understanding that access to the natural environment — access to programming — is public health infrastructure. These are critical investments to ensure the health and flourishing of the regional population.”

Justin DiBerardinis, executive director of the nonprofit Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, which supports the 300-acre Tacony Creek Park, has visions of turning it into the “Wissahickon of North Philadelphia.” He’s actively seeking grant money to help address large overflows of sewage into the creek and hopes one day it will be clean enough to stock sport fish.

But swimming? Given the crowds and littering problems he knows exist at Devil’s Pool, along with all the other inherent challenges for this holy grail of water recreation, DiBerardinis has firm doubts.

“Boatable, fishable, that’s there and that should be encouraged at the highest levels,” he says. “Can we be at a point where we can say as a city that [our waters] are safe to swim in? I don’t think that’s realistic.”

Opinions are even split on Philadelphia’s cleanest watershed, the Wissahickon. Erin Landis, water programs manager for Wissahickon Trails, a nonprofit that stewards the creek’s watershed in Montgomery County, said the organization currently adheres to a no-swim standard based on DEP’s guidelines. However, the group is focused on reducing stormwater runoff that carries pollutants into the creek and is open to the idea of a swimmable future.

“We are always balancing the recreational use of land and waterways with habitat and ecological protection,” Landis said. “In a developed watershed such as this, any water quality improvements are worth pursuing and delisting segments of the Wissahickon Creek and/or tributaries for … recreational use would be considered a huge accomplishment.”

However, Friends of the Wissahickon Interim Executive Director Sarah Marley says her organization believes there are too many hazards — dams, submerged objects, flash flooding conditions — in the Philadelphia stretch of the creek, and a lack of resources for lifeguards.

“Trying to obtain any kind of regular supervision of people either swimming or boating in such an inherently problematic area with often unpredictable conditions does not feel feasible or justifiable,” Marley said.

Joseph Syrnick, of Schuylkill Banks, says his nonprofit organization originally formed more than 20 years ago out of a desire to push city officials to “get off their rear ends and do something” about reconnecting Philadelphians to the river as it passes through Center City.

He feels they’ve achieved that goal over the decades, but by developing a closer working relationship with the city. The skinny swath of land separating Center City from the east banks of the Schuylkill used to be an industrial corridor, he says. The train tracks are still there, but much of the strip is also now a green oasis where people come to run, fish, relax, and occasionally launch a kayak. Vendor Hidden River Outfitters, which offers kayak tours of Center City, regularly sells out paddling excursions that launch from Schuylkill Banks’ dock, and Syrnick’s organization plans to build another dock south of Walnut Street that would be flush with the water, and thus more conducive to launching kayaks.

Maitreyi Roy, executive director of Bartram’s Garden, a 50-acre park abutting the Schuylkill in Southwest Philadelphia, said local interest in its paddling and fishing programs has grown exponentially over the past decade. Combined sewer overflows cancel about a quarter of their on-river programs due to unsafe levels of pathogens, but Roy said she’s presently working in good faith with PWD to find solutions. Even if the Schuylkill’s waters were to become immaculately clean overnight, she feels much more is needed before Philadelphians can safely take to the river on their own in large numbers, given its powerful currents and other hazards.

“We have to take the long view,” Roy says. “There’s no, you know, ‘Turn on this switch and it’ll be done.’ It’s a generational challenge.”

But she agrees wholeheartedly with Discovery Pathways founder Adam Forbes that it’s worth doing. While some view kayaking and river swimming as appealing primarily to white and upper-class Philadelphians, both advocates say their programming also draws a diverse mix of Latino, Black, and Asian attendees eager to get onto the water. And providing those opportunities, they say, is an ideal way to get people thinking about the health of local rivers and creeks and the influence of humans.

Perhaps no one is more emblematic of that influence than 17-year-old Tha Oo. During a recent Discovery Pathways paddle at FDR, the rising senior at George Washington Carver High School of Engineering and Science in North Philadelphia supervised junior members of the organization as they helped visitors into and out of kayaks and rowboats. Like many of his peers, Oo had never been on the water prior to joining the group four years ago. He says his first time out was “scary” but that he learned to overcome the fear and began thinking about his relationship with the rivers, creeks and lakes that dot Philadelphia’s landscape. Now, he dreams of becoming an environmental engineer.

“Before I joined the program, I had a bad habit of polluting and not being a really good environmental person,” Oo said. “But after joining, I’m seeing more opportunities for me in environmental protection and telling others to stop polluting.”