News Stream: Designing Water

Photo: Joseph G. Brin

Highly recommended reading: "Designing Water," an article that appeared last week in Metropolis magazine. The piece by Joseph G. Brin ties together Philadelphia's legacy as one of the first cities in the nation to provide large-scale drinking water facilities (via the Fairmount Water Works, back when PWD was called the Watering Committee) with the current Green City, Clean Waters plan to manage stormwater through green infrastructure. Brin focuses on how Philadelphia is once again thinking of long-term, innovative solutions to urban water problems:

"In 1967, Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman in the The Graduate) was told the key to his young future lay in one word,'Plastics.'

In 2012, Howard Neukrug, PE, Commissioner for the City of Philadelphia Water Department (PWD), would probably tell you it’s 'Stormwater Management' or the equivalent, equally sexy 'Demand Reduction.' But you have to appreciate he’s taking the city in a specific direction that has as much to do with the values we live by as it does about the diameter of stormwater piping and green infrastructure strategies that are all part of his overall, guiding vision."