Casino and union bosses say profits will tank with a smoking ban. Workers fear for their health without one.
Fields or meadows? The history of Philly public parks p. 10
Mitigating the dangers of your gas stove p. 26 ■ PA becomes a hotbed for cool linen p. 16
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At Least You’ve Got Your Health
What ’ s more important, jobs or health?
The question nominally sits at the heart of the struggle to ban smoking in casinos in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, covered by Rebecca McCarthy in this issue. The people who work at casinos say they should not have to breathe tobacco smoke at work, since that can lead to cancer and worsen all sorts of lung and cardiovascular illnesses. The opponents of the bans — casino owners, joined by unions representing some casino workers — say it would cost jobs to ban smoking.
As someone who hasn’t been inside a casino since the 1980s (literally, as in the one time, on a family trip down the Shore, my Dad and I stepped off the Atlantic City boardwalk and into a casino so I could see what was inside the huge, windowless building), I honestly hadn’t realized smoking was still allowed.
The negative health impacts of secondhand smoke have been well known for decades, and New Jersey and Pennsylvania passed bans on smoking inside businesses in 2006 and 2008, respectively, though with loopholes for casinos.
Why should casinos cling to this exemption when plenty of other formerly smoky businesses like bars and restaurants have thrived without it? Casinos lack windows so that patrons entranced at slot machines don’t notice time passing. I suspect that they never want gamblers to step outside for a cigarette, see the sun has set and realize that they’ve been there too long. Nicotine addiction can’t be allowed to interfere with the gambling habit casinos depend on.
But what about the jobs? As a rule, I dismiss any industry complaint that jobs could be lost due to proposed health, safety or environmental regulation. For one thing, the companies or industry groups claiming that jobs will be lost aren’t in the business of creating jobs or building a healthy economy. If they could make more money without
employees, they would. For another thing, losing jobs in one company or industry doesn’t mean they won’t be gained in another. Smokers might gamble a tad less if they had to step outside to have a cigarette, but they’d spend that money somewhere else, maybe on some other form of entertainment. The question of economic impact is further complicated by the case of Parx Casino, which lost some customers when it banned smoking but made up the lost business with customers who prefer smoke-free spaces. In any case, the casinos might take a hit, but the economy wouldn’t.
It’s not jobs we should be worried about saving, it’s lives.
And, as I’ve argued in these pages before, there’s also something coercive about focusing on jobs rather than the material benefits (money to pay for food, shelter and other needs) and psychological benefits (a sense of security and of purpose) that they provide. An industry that is willing to risk the lives of its workers in order to more thoroughly enthrall its customers is particularly reprehensible.
As Arline Geronimus makes clear in her book “Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society,” too many people in our society live shorter, sicker lives because racism, poverty and the impossible task of balancing work and family demands grinds them down. We need to ask how we can ensure secure well-being, not what people who have been stricken, often at a young age, by chronic illnesses can do to help themselves (especially if the answer is to work longer hours at risky jobs). We have to ensure that we meet needs, jobs or no jobs. Saving workers from breathing toxic air should be the bare minimum.
bernard brown , Managing Editor
If You Raze It, They Will Come
After several centuries, a dam is set to be removed from Cobbs Creek. Red tape continues to delay the project by dawn kane and bernard brown
It has been nearly 380 years since blueback herring have been able to swim up Cobbs Creek beyond what is now Woodland Avenue. Back in 1645, New Sweden’s governor, Johan Björnsson Printz, built a gristmill on the waterway the Lenape call Karakung. Water-powered mills generally rely on a dam that backs the water up and then releases it as needed through an artificial channel called a mill
race to turn a wheel that drives the machinery, in this case grinding grain into flour. That flour presumably fed Swedes manning a nearby fort. The location was strategic, along the Great Minquas Path, on which the Susquehannock tribe transported beaver pelts to trade with Europeans.
The Swedes lost their colony to the Dutch in 1655, and later the British took over. The dam, rebuilt who knows how many times,
remains. William Penn’s 1681 map of his new colony shows “Sweeds Mill” at the same location. A 1750 map shows a “Snuff Mill,” which presumably produced powdered tobacco products, and an 1872 map showed “Paschall’s Saw Mill,” along with the mill race that channeled the power of falling water to cut logs into boards. That mill race flowed into the Passmore Textile Mill below Woodland Avenue, and in 1895 Fels & Company bought the site of the textile mill to produce their famous FelsNaptha laundry soap.
The centuries of industrial activity that took advantage of Cobbs Creek came to a close nearly 100 years ago, but the dam still stands. Blueback herring, close relatives of American shad, spend most of their lives in the ocean but breed in fresh water — an “anadromous” life cycle. (American
Erik Silldorff of the Delaware Riverkeeper Network stands at the Woodland Dam, which keeps fish (including the banded killifish, opposite page) out of the rest of Cobbs Creek.
It looks like it should be more simple than it ends up being.”
— jessie thomas-blate, American Rivers
eels, “catadromous” fish, do the reverse, spending most of their lives in creeks and rivers but breeding in the open ocean.) The herring still bump their noses against the Woodland Dam.
The dam, which sits between the tidal and nontidal sections of Cobbs Creek, was classified as the first impediment to fish passage on the waterway (moving upstream from the ocean), according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report published in 2016. In 2003 Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) biologists documenting fish collected 19 species above the Woodland Avenue dam versus 43 species in the tidal portions of Cobbs Creek. “Most notable was the absence of anadromous and semi-migratory fish species in the non-tidal reaches (above Woodland Dam),” the Corps wrote in the report.
In 2009 PWD made a plan to take it
down. It might seem like a simple matter to knock down a few feet of concrete, but things are not always as easy as they seem. Change the name of the creek, and the same story could be told hundreds of times across Pennsylvania. European colonists and their descendents built dams to power mills. Larger dams built in the 20th century protect downstream communities from floods and provide reservoirs for drinking water and recreation. New and old dams alike block fish and other aquatic life from moving upstream, providing a compelling ecological argument for dam demolition.
But even when property owners or local governments don’t have a strong interest in creek ecology, safety and liability concerns can motivate them to dismantle old dams.
In 1978, after Pennsylvania’s third catastrophic dam failure, in which the Laurel
Run Dam in Tanneryville destroyed homes and killed 40 people, the state enacted the Dam Safety and Encroachments Act, regulating dams and other water obstructions and categorizing them by hazard level. Dams are classified by their size and their potential to cause harm. For example, the failure of a high-hazard dam is expected to endanger populated areas downstream.
The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection regulates the safety of the state’s dams, the majority of which are privately owned and serve purposes ranging from recreation to hydroelectric power. If the dams are determined to represent a safety hazard, owners must provide the state with proof of financial responsibility to continue a dam’s operation.
Dams don’t need to fail to be dangerous. A low-head dam spans the width of a river and can create a placid pool upstream that invites fishing and swimming — without any obvious sign of danger. However, water passing over the dam can create a hydraulic action just beyond the barrier that can trap people underwater. In 1998, the state enacted legislation calling for owners to post warnings about the potential dangers of these kinds of dams, also known as “run-of-the river dams.”
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates that 50 people drown annually across the country at these kinds of dams. In Harrisburg, a reporter for PennLive found that while deaths at the Dock Street Dam, a “killer” dam, had gone untracked, there had been 30 known fatalities between 1935 and 2018.
In 2013 Brandon Boyle, 13 years old , drowned while playing around a dam on Pennypack Creek in Northeast Philadelphia, at a spot where, three years before, a 20-year-old swimmer had lost his life.
“In my experience, [dam ownership] has been kind of a liability,” says Jacob Helminiak, hydraulic engineer with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Philadelphia District. If a privately owned dam fails to meet safety regulations, owners are expected to upgrade it to meet those standards. “Oftentimes, dam removal comes into the conversation then if it costs less.”
Whatever the motivation to do so, removing a dam has the potential to reconnect waterways and benefit the wildlife living in them. “Certainly the single biggest benefit of dam removal are the migratory fish. The Delaware River and all of its tributaries
are loaded with migratory fish — some of our most important species in these ecosystems,” says Erik Silldorff, restoration director and senior scientist at the Delaware Riverkeeper Network.
The Musconetcong River in northern New Jersey had been dammed since the 1700s, keeping out fish that could have entered from the Delaware. After the removal of four dams on the Musconetcong between 2008 and 2017, American shad were spotted just upstream of the former site of the Hughesville Dam, the last one to be removed.
In the Chesapeake watershed near Baltimore, Maryland scientists monitoring fish in the Patapsco River above the site of the former Bloede Dam found that alewife and blueback herring were returning upriver.
Dam removals starting near the mouths of the two rivers allow migratory fish to move freely, but even dam removals within river systems that are still blocked from the ocean can make a difference for fish that stay in freshwater, such as white suckers, which can live in smaller tributaries when young and in deeper sections of larger waterways as adults. Before the Manatawny Creek dam near Pottstown was removed, researchers marked fish below and above the dam. After the dam was taken down, they found marked fish on the other side of where the dam had been. These kinds of fish movements are critical to native mussels, which as larvae hitch rides on fish gills before settling to the bottom. A dam that blocks fish also cuts off mussel populations.
The Cobbs Creek Fish Passage Plan, approved by the Corps of Engineers in 2017, called for partial removal of the Woodland Dam, inclusion of a fish ladder (aka a rock ramp) and stream restoration. Fish would be able to swim up a series of shallow rocky steps to get over the lowered dam, as shown in a project description issued by PWD.
On paper it looked straightforward enough, but dam removals aren’t always straightforward.
“It looks like it should be more simple than it ends up being,” says Jessie Thomas-Blate, director of river restoration at American Rivers. “Regardless of where it is or who owns it, you have to do some kind of design, hire engineers to look at the site, and
Certainly the single biggest benefit of dam removal are the migratory fish. The Delaware River and all of its tributaries are loaded with migratory fish.”
erik silldorff, Delaware Riverkeeper Network
design for deconstruction.” The design can become more complicated if there is other infrastructure in or near the dam, such as a road running along the top or sewage pipes running under it. Dams also tend to trap sediment over their lifespan, so removing them can release pollutants that have been banned for decades.
After the initial design steps, dam removals require a lengthy permitting process. PWD submitted their plan for the Woodland Dam to the Corps of Engineers in 2009, and it was approved in 2017.
In 2023 all appeared to be on track for work to begin soon, but in December of that year a PWD representative informed Grid that the project was on hold. According to Stephen Rochette of the Corps of Engineers, the project was paused due to the City’s “inability to obtain the necessary real
estate easements that enable construction to move forward.” (Grid reached out to PWD for more information about the difficulties gaining access to the property along the dam but did not receive a response before going to print.)
Until the City can access the land needed to complete the project, the Woodland Dam will remain a barrier to migrating fish. Every year another generation of blueback herring will make it to the Woodland Dam and, finding no way around it, end its journey there, thanks now to barriers of law and property ownership as much as of concrete. ◆
The current Woodland Dam and predecessors at the same location have blocked off Cobbs Creek for nearly 380 years.
A Deeper Green
Former solar installer is committed to retrofitting homes for the working class by
Asearch for real estate under $200,000 in Philadelphia yields mostly fixer-uppers and condominiums. Marc Rowell’s mission with Deep Green Retrofit , launched in 2021, is to develop energy efficient, move-in ready housing for workingclass families, putting affordability and sustainability ahead of personal profit.
Growing up in public housing in North Philadelphia, Rowell came to believe that the residents deserved better. That idea combined with his passion for sustainability led him to a study abroad program in Nepal and China, where, as an undergrad, he recognized the untapped potential of solar energy in the affordable housing market.
After returning home, Rowell trained with Solar States, a Certified B Corporation, in Philadelphia, becoming an installer for the
dawn kane
company in 2019 before advancing to a project manager role. Micah Gold-Markel, founder of Solar States, recalls Rowell’s passion: “He was our top salesperson for a solid year.”
Rowell’s latest passion project — Deep Green Retrofit’s first fully renovated home — was listed for $170,000 in November, with a sale pending. The three-bedroom, one-bath West Philadelphia row house not only boasts solar panels and Energy Star appliances, but also comes with an orange bicycle and a oneyear subscription to Bennett Compost.
On a house tour, Rowell’s enthusiasm builds as he descends the stairs into a clean, unfinished basement. “My favorite thing in the house is the heat pump water heater,” he says. “It uses less energy than some people’s toaster,” he explains, estimating that typical water heaters, in contrast, account for 10% of a home’s total energy costs.
To keep renovation costs down — and set future residents up for a lower cost of living — Rowell took advantage of tax credits and rebates from PECO and the local and federal governments. “Installing green appliances was a no-brainer,” he says.
“People in the development business usually want to double their money” rather than address the lack of affordable, sustainable housing stock, says Gold-Markel. “It’s impressive that [Rowell] says, ‘I’m going to solve THAT problem.’”
But completing the renovation has been fraught with challenges. The transfer of title from the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) took two years. Then Rowell discovered that the house had faulty plumbing and was flooding, so he had to replace pipes and walls.
When the pandemic-induced supplychain problems drove up the price of solar, Rowell says he “felt close to wrecking” the project. But he knew that for a house to stay affordable in the face of rising energy costs and property taxes, solar technology was a must. “I got it back on track when I stopped approaching it like it was an individual thing, and I started relying on people I know had expertise,” he says.
“I couldn’t have done it without the connections that I’ve made over the years,” he says, crediting the experiences he gained through the National Black MBA Association Collegiate Innovation Challenge, Ken Weinstein of Jumpstart Germantown, Tim Bennett of Bennett Compost and Gold-Markel for helping him bring the project to fruition.
Gold-Markel says it’s important for policymakers and community leaders to provide entrepreneurs like Rowell with springboards that set them up for success.
While retrofits are the core of Rowell’s work, he eventually would like to try his hand at new construction. For now, the challenges he has set for himself include meeting more st ringent building goals, such as those needed for the Home Energy Rating System (HERS), Energy Star certification and ultimately the Living Building Challenge standards. He says that although each of these comes with increasingly challenging benchmarks, building to these specifications would lock in long-term affordability for homeowners. ◆
Marc Rowell hopes his sustainable home renovation on South Wilton Street in Southwest Philadelphia is the first of many.
Transformative Work
Black-led nonprofit educates and assists Philly’s youth in navigating the juvenile legal system and extricating themselves from it by constance garcia-barrio
On the morning of September 13, 2023, James Aye, cofounder and coCEO of the Youth Empowerment for Advancement Hangout (YEAH Philly), a Black-led nonprofit that provides critical services to teens and young adults, refused to leave a hearing when ordered to do so. An 18-year-old probationer, a YEAH Philly client and the subject of the hearing, had requested Aye’s presence.
Aye was arrested, spent a night in jail, and was charged with obstruction of justice, resisting arrest, disrupting meetings and
defiant trespass. Prison was a possibility.
Aye’s stance reflects YEAH Philly’s drive to, per the organization’s mission statement, help the Philadelphians from ages 15 to 24 most at risk of getting caught up in violence — or already in its snares. “Too often, this is the young Black person who’s been kicked out of their home or out of their school without receiving quality services from the city,” says Kendra Van de Water, LSW, cofounder and co-CEO of YEAH Philly. Many of the group’s clients also have lost a loved one to violence, she says.
Within days of Aye’s arrest, State Representative Rick Krajewski and City Councilmembers Jamie Gauthier and Kendra Brooks issued a joint statement, citing Aye’s courtroom presence as “part of YEAH Philly’s transformative work in youth advocacy recognized by leaders across the Commonwealth.”
Last year, that work meant attending 1,002 hearings, giving legal guidance to 131 young people and helping 87 of them stay in the community instead of being incarcerated, says YEAH Philly’s 2023 annual report.
James Aye and Kendra Van de Water, cofounders of YEAH Philly, support and stand up for youth that are impacted by the juvenile legal system.
The group also pushed for transparency in the juvenile legal system with an ad in bus stop kiosks in August 2023, a month before Aye’s arrest, asking, “Who’s watching juvenile judges?”
The joint statement also called YEAH Philly “champions of our community,” suggesting that the nonprofit’s unconventional approach to aiding young people yields benefits beyond the juvenile legal system.
YEAH Philly grew from Aye’s and Van de Water’s frustration with programs organized by schools, the government and other institutions whose many rules often lead young people to disengage. In 2019 Aye and Van de Water knocked on the doors of about 300 young West Philadelphians and surveyed them about their needs. The responses shaped free workshops Aye and Van de Water began giving at recreation centers, including the one in Cobbs Creek, on topics such as conflict resolution, stress management and sexual health. When word spread, the gatherings outgrew the sites. In 2021, the search for an adequate space led to
goal of helping young people reduce harm and avoid violence and extricate themselves from the juvenile legal system if they have become involved in it. “We’re advocating for every young person to have an independent counsel of their choice and independent oversight of the juvenile legal system,” Van de Water says. “We see a lot of harm and corruption … in our legal system, and oversight would mean some accountability.”
Aye and Van de Water also seek alternatives to detention. Incarceration further harms young people and is money ill spent, according to Van de Water. “It costs $220,000 per year per kid in Philadelphia’s Juvenile Justice Services Center,” she says. “At YEAH Philly, we spend $20,000 per kid per year and get far better results.”
In addition, YEAH Philly is working to change the electronic monitoring of youth and in-home detention. House arrest means that kids can’t leave the house at all, Van de Water says. That requirement often shuts the door on counseling, tutoring and participating in activities like sports, unless
We see a lot of harm and corruption … in our legal system, and oversight would mean some accountability.”
— kendra van de water, YEAH Philly
a two-story house in West Philly, purchased after a crowdfunding campaign raised the required $200,000.
Youth, largely from West and Southwest Philly, can get a hot meal, a hot shower, tutoring, job and housing referrals, counseling, help with budgeting or opening a bank account and more, says Van de Water of the hangout, open 2 p.m. to 10 p.m., Monday through Friday. Young people may nap there but not spend the night. The hangout serves more than 500 clients per year, according to the annual report. YEAH Philly encourages them to take the two-day peer mediation and conflict resolution workshop, tailored specifically for the young Black clientele. Participants receive $150 upon completion.
The workshop advances YEAH Philly’s
probation authorities approve them well in advance. Sometimes they don’t, Van de Water adds.
YEAH Philly also seeks more restorative justice programs and practices, such as one in which the person harmed and the young offender meet under certain conditions.
On the state level, YEAH Philly is working to stop the practice of charging young people as adults. “We don’t believe any kid should be in prison,” Van de Water says. The focus, she stresses, should be on rehabilitation and support.
Those efforts in Harrisburg dovetail with the nonprofit’s goal of increasing clients’ political savvy. A group of YEAH Philly staffers and participants visited the state capital several times in 2022 to urge legislators to back changes that would allow young peo-
ple to request their birth certificate — needed for employment — at age 16 rather than 18. “We were in the voting room when they said ‘Aye!’ or ‘Nay!’” says Presley Barner, 18, a program participant and intern. The measure passed.
Activities like camping, travel and zip-lining further stretch clients’ outlook. “We visited Bar Harbor, Maine,” Barner says. “I ate lobster there. It was the bomb! People may give you money, but the best gift is experience.”
YEAH Philly’s innovations have borne fruit. While 17 clients were rearrested for violations or new charges, 21 young people were discharged from the legal system, 44 were placed in long-term paid training and 99 were trained in peer mediation and conflict resolution, among other accomplishments, according to the annual report.
In another heartening moment, YEAH Philly staff attended The Gault Center’s Youth Defender Leadership Summit in Denver. At the event, which champions justice for youth, they discussed the success of their Violent Crime Initiative’s intensive services for young people with representatives from other states and cities.
In addition, District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office withdrew the charges against Aye one year after his arrest because the case wasn’t moving forward, Van de Water says.
To achieve these outcomes, Aye and Van de Water often put in 12-hour days. Getting funding from private foundations, the government and donations takes time, Van de Water says. “Everyone wants to fund what’s popular at the moment, yet we’re always here doing what’s right for young people, not following a trend,” she says. YEAH Philly’s continuing efforts to invest in the community, spur change in the juvenile legal system and prepare young Philadelphians for empowerment and success are motivated not by buzzwords, hashtags or fads but by the needs — and goals — of the city’s youth.
“We cannot tell young people what to do,” Van de Water says. “We’ll continue to respect them as the experts about their own lives.” ◆
To support YEAH Philly, visit yeahphilly.org and click “Donate.”
Field or Meadow?
The fight over FDR Park is only the latest tussle over how to design Philly’s green spaces by kyle bagenstose
In philadelphia, there was once a large public park where humans had previously intervened but where nature was reasserting itself. Residents flocked there to leave the noise and rigidity of the city grid behind and bathe in the wild unruliness of trees and meadows. This
was a world unto itself, but not for long: one day word came that chainsaws and bulldozers would soon arrive to chop down trees and flatten the earth, making room for the straight lines and ecologically-bereft landscapes of sports fields and picnic greens.
But those who loved the trees fought
back. After all, this was the Wissahickon under threat. The year was 1937.
The above, of course, also evokes the contentious, present-day redevelopment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt Park in South Philadelphia. History repeats itself in many ways, and here in Philadelphia the controversy around the $250-million FDR Park overhaul is but the latest manifestation of a long-running tension over what kinds of public parks the city’s residents get.
Much has been written about the fight over FDR, but what that conversation often
Justin DiBerardinis of the
Tookany/Tacony-Frankford
Watershed Partnership
says Philadelphia’s parks
are a “tremendous gift of previous generations” that need more resources and attention.
lacks is context: who has traditionally decided who gets what in their park, why did they decide as they did, and how have those decisions impacted where we are today?
The search for these answers expands the scope of inquiry beyond FDR, to Bartram’s Garden, Tacony, Pennypack, Cobbs Creek and the core of Fairmount Park. It suddenly stretches to just about every neighborhood in Philadelphia, to every parcel of land unburdened by buildings or streetscape.
What are Philadelphians getting in their parks? And why?
Philadelphia is spending, per capita, on public space and recreation, a fraction of what [peer] cities are doing.”
Green space was engineered into Philadelphia’s built environment from the get-go. In 1682, surveyor Thomas Holme, at the request of William Penn, laid out a grid for the city that included four public squares still in existence today: Logan, Franklin, Washington and Rittenhouse. Further, plotlines left room for private outdoor gardens for many residences, all in an effort to best the crowded, clamorous cities of England.
But another motivating factor was Penn’s vision of a more equitable city, where beautiful green spaces were public property and not the privately-owned European gardens whose access could be capriciously controlled by aristocratic owners.
“This sense of needing green spaces, or needing places to … assemble and do whatever it was you wanted to do, has always been [in Philadelphia],” says Elizabeth Milroy, professor emerita at the University of Pennsylvania and author of a seminal book on the history of the city’s parks, “ The Grid and the River: Philadelphia’s Green Places, 1682–1876.”
And as Milroy points out, true wilderness was also easily accessible for early Philadelphians into the 1800s, as development hugged the Delaware River, leaving forested lands within walking distance.
“The whole western section of Philadelphia was forest until 1877. I mean forest. You could get lost just walking west of Fifth Street,” Milroy says.
But as the city’s population increased throughout the 19th century and the Industrial Revolution rolled on, greenscapes began to give way to gray. Suddenly, country estates along the Schuylkill River became prime targets for heavy industry. Shielding the local watershed of the newly constructed Fairmount Water Works from pollution is often cited as motivation for establishing
Fairmount Park along the city’s western flank, but Milroy says that was a convenient excuse for those interested in conserving the surrounding landscapes against encroaching development.
By 1867, these energies crystallized into the formation of the Fairmount Park Commission, a semiautonomous city agency that for the next 140 years collected public lands throughout the city — from Fairmount Park proper to the Wissahickon and Pennypack — and exercised great control over their development and use.
Creating Recreation
Who and what is a park for? The Fairmount Park Commission had to grapple with these questions.
Initially the conservation of the vast lands of Fairmount Park grew out of a nationwide 19th-century “parks movement” that also birthed New York’s Central Park and counted Ralph Waldo Emerson and landscape gardener Andrew Jackson Downing among its luminaries. Proponents sought to provide a sense of cleansing open spaces to cities increasingly wracked by race riots and other social ills.
“There was a growing sense that by providing public parks that are actually managed, public behavior will be improved,” Milroy says.
Milroy says there was a classist undercurrent within the Fairmount Park Commission from the beginning, however. Many initial supporters of conservation, and thereafter much of the commission’s leadership, were elites, including members of the Widener and Price families. By the turn of the 20th century, critics were complaining that the commission wasn’t doing enough to serve the needs of an expanding and diverse metropolis.
“Forming the east and west [Fairmount]
park: great for the people of West Philadelphia. Not so great for the people who lived in Port Richmond,” Milroy observes.
Challenges to the status quo emerged. In 1888, the independent City Parks Association formed to create public parks in other areas of the city, eventually helping to facilitate the creation of Bartram’s Garden, FDR and Pennypack. Kate Cowing, a Philadelphia-based architectural conservator who has also studied the history of the city’s parks, adds that at the dawn of the 20th century, a national park reform movement emerged to champion active recreation over passive contemplation in public parks.
“City parks were supposed to give city people places to go to expel their energy,” Cowing explains. “Ball fields, golf courses, slides, picnic areas, tennis courts, et cetera, et cetera.”
By the early 20th century, City Hall began to invest in recreational infrastructure such as playgrounds throughout Philadelphia and formed a Bureau of Recreation to oversee the efforts. Successive administrations butted heads with the Fairmount Park Commission over its perceived reluctance to promote more active recreation, and by 1928 a national report targeted the commission as one of the country’s worst laggards in adapting to changing tastes.
Soon, the tensions came to a head in the Wissahickon Valley. In 1937, word emerged of a federally-funded plan to vastly overhaul the park, through the installation of dozens of picnic areas, bathrooms, tennis courts, baseball fields, vending facilities and other improvements. While powerful opponents in Chestnut Hill were able to greatly curtail the proposal, $16 million in federal money went into revamping other city parks during the 1930s.
One of the era’s notable additions: a golf course at FDR Park.
Money Doesn’t Grow on Trees
Money has always been a problem for Philadelphia’s green spaces, even for those original public squares: Well into the late 1700s, cattle, brick kilns, flooding and even public executions were common sights in Rittenhouse Square, with residents often petitioning the city government to spend money on improvements and sometimes funding it themselves when no money shook loose.
Milroy’s research reveals that funding con-
cerns continued into the era of the Fairmount Park Commission. Even though wealthy benefactors supported the commission’s formation and bequeathed parcels of land, ongoing maintenance and improvements of the parks relied on funding from the city. Even in the 1870s, when Fairmount Park hosted the Centennial International Exhibition, Philadelphia spent an average of only $223,000 on the park’s upkeep, Milroy found, less than a third of what New York spent on (considerably smaller) Central Park.
By the 1930s, concern over the commission’s opaque finances and lack of focus on recreation was drawing state-level scrutiny. The commission began to relent.
“Suddenly tennis courts start popping up,” Milroy says. “That’s part of the reason why [these courts] seem to be just sort of plugged into places like East and West Fairmount Park.”
with the power to decide what goes where say it’s just not that simple. The city is a big and complicated place with various competing — and changeable — interests. And money is ever short.
“Philadelphia is spending, per capita, on public space and recreation, a fraction of what [peer] cities are doing,” says Justin DiBerardinis, executive director of the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, a nonprofit helping steward the 30-square-mile watershed in North and Northeast Philadelphia.
Prior reporting by Grid (#163, December 2022) revealed the extent of park funding shortfalls in the city. The budget for the Fairmount Park Commission fell from 2.26% of the city’s budget in 1960 to 0.32% in 2009, the year before it merged into Parks & Recreation. More recent estimates show funding for parks at about 0.78% of the total
City parks were supposed to give city people places to go to expel their energy. Ball fields, golf courses, slides, picnic areas, tennis courts, et cetera, et cetera.”
—kate cowing, architectural conservator
Still, concerns about the commission’s stewardship of the city’s parks persisted. City Hall continued to increase its own recreational infrastructure, including the 1952 creation of the Department of Recreation. And City Council regularly clashed with the independently-run commission. In 2010, it was Philadelphians themselves who voted via referendum to combine the commission and prior Recreation Department into the new Philadelphia Department of Parks & Recreation, bringing management of Philadelphia’s vast parks and recreational assets fully under the auspices of city government. A new era had arrived.
Par for the Course?
As tempting as it might be to look across the current landscapes of Philadelphia’s parks and render judgment on the outcome of these historical decisions, many of those
budget — a modest rebound that still leaves it at a third of historical funding levels. Per capita, Philadelphia now spends 60 cents on the dollar on parks compared to the national average, with an unusually high amount of that coming from volunteer hours and spending by private groups, instead of municipal coffers, according to the Trust for Public Land’s ParkScore
DiBerardinis views Philadelphia’s parks as a “tremendous gift of previous generations.” But the lack of funding has resulted in serious maintenance issues, complicating the conversation about which land uses should be prioritized.
“We have thousands of acres of forested land in the city,” DiBerardinis says. “But does it have signage? Is it trailed? Does it have amenities? Are the invasives under control? Is it welcoming? Does it feel safe? These are the challenges that prevent these natural
land areas from achieving that incredible dual identity of being great ecological areas … and also having a transformational impact on the lives of Philadelphians.”
Officials with Parks & Recreation identify additional priorities. Leigh Ann Campbell, the department’s director of planning, preservation and property management, notes that it now has oversight over assets as disparate as historic buildings, natural lands, recreation centers, playgrounds, street trees, parks and pools. And commissioner Susan Slawson says the department primarily makes land use decisions based on input from nearby communities and coordination with nonprofits.
“We have communities, we have neighborhoods, we have people that are very vocal about what they want in their parks, in their recreation, whether it’s passive or not,” Slawson says.
But some have criticized the city as now being too deferential to outside groups. The Fairmount Park Commission has been re-
placed by dozens of local “friends” groups and other nonprofits. Kevin Loughran, a sociologist at Temple University whose book “Parks for Profit: Selling Nature in the City” examines the relationship between public parks and the groups that care for them, previously told Grid (#157, June 2022) that the city’s reliance on nonprofits can lead to inequitable outcomes and also allow hidden financial interests to dictate land use decisions.
All of these thorny issues have come to a head in FDR Park in recent years, after the Fairmount Park Conservancy, a nonprofit offshoot of the former commission that still helps steward vast acreages of city parks, proposed a complete, $250-million overhaul.
The redevelopment plan is a once-in-a-century opportunity for one of Philadelphia’s largest parks — and provides a window into how the system currently works.
And things certainly look ugly. Opponents of the plan went to court, unsuccessfully, to try to stop the razing of heritage trees and a burgeoning meadow on the de-
funct 1930s-era golf course, which will clear the way for the installation of AstroTurf fields. Critics also say the conservancy and City are giving too much deference to financial interests, as the park plans to achieve financial stability through concessions and leasing out playing fields, including during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Anisa George, an environmental educator and leading opponent of the plan, notes that local neighborhood groups including the Friends of FDR Park and Packer Park Civic Association opposed the razing of the heritage trees. She decries what she sees as an undemocratic process, with important decisions made by the nonprofit conservancy without the same level of public oversight given to other controversial City Hall decisions.
“Where the heck is the public mandate for this process?” George asks. “Where are the videos? Where are the transcripts? Where is the recorded testimony?”
But Allison Schapker, chief operations and projects officer for the conservancy, who has
An abandoned golf course is great for passive recreation, but Philadelphia Parks & Recreation and the Fairmount Park Conservancy say the city needs more ballfields.
shepherded the redevelopment plan since 2018, insists that the plan does reflect public sentiment gathered via a “community-led” process, pointing to numerous proactive and reactive public engagement initiatives in early planning stages and the fact that supporters of the plan say playing fields are sorely needed for youth sports in the city.
“We’re confident in the fact that the plan balances activity, nature and water in the interest of the broadest possible group of Philadelphians,” Schapker says.
More holistically, she believes the plan is a model for the modern era of Philadelphia’s parks. She acknowledges the city’s lack of overall funding for parks — “It’s really clear there just aren’t enough resources in our city to take care of any piece of these critical landscapes in a way that I think we all would love to see happen,” she says — and stresses the importance of thinking about dependable revenue streams.
“Conversations about the cost of maintenance absolutely need to include the understanding that natural areas aren’t free, and every piece of ground that we have in our
We’re confident in the fact that the plan balances activity, nature and water in the interest of the broadest possible group of Philadelphians.”
—allison schapker, Fairmount Park Conservancy
park system requires some level of ongoing investment,” Schapker says.
Ultimately, the plans call for about 60% of acreage to be dedicated to natural areas and 40% to recreation, which she says is an overall increase toward natural areas compared to when the golf course was in operation, and also representative of the diversity of public feedback. Schapker also argues that the planned placement of those assets makes sense both logistically, with playing fields going on the perimeter of the park where they’re most accessible via public transit, and ecologically, with the playing fields situated atop the previously pesticideand herbicide-laden golf course fairways, while a 30-acre tidal wetland is restored in the southwest corner of the park.
Asked why, if all these things are true, the plan was met with a sudden swell of public opposition upon early stages of implementation, Schapker cited a shift in the preferences of some who began visiting the golf-course-turned-meadow during the pandemic. Whether or not that observation is true, Schapker later offered another that undeniably reflects the centuries of wrangling over Philadelphia’s green spaces.
“No matter what,” she said, “a change in land use is always going to be controversial.”
This path and the overgrown golf course it winds through will be erased as part of the FDR Park renovation.
Vyce Studio
Home Woven
With the help of a sizable grant, farmers are rebuilding the long-lost Pennsylvania linen industry by
Long after the sweltering heat of summer is a distant memory, Heidi Barr is still thinking about light and airy linen — or at least about growing flax, from which linen is made. Barr, a textile artist and costume designer, first became intrigued with the fiber when she was looking for a local linen supplier for her home textiles company and came up empty-handed. Not long after, local farmer Emma de Long contacted Barr and asked her to make her a linen wedding dress, and the two went down a rabbit hole researching domestic linen production. Barr discovered that flax seed first came to the United States with the Dutch and German settlers of Germantown, a Philadelphia neighborhood just 10 minutes from where she lives.
During the pandemic, the two planted a test plot of flax at de Long’s vegetable and flower farm, Kneehigh Farm in Pottstown, Montgomery County. They consulted with growers from the North American Linen Association (NALA), and in 2020 they started the PA Flax Project (PAFP) to organize farmers and create an infrastructure to bring the industry back to America. In January 2024, they were awarded a three-year, $1.7 million U.S. Department of Agriculture Organic Market Development Grant to grow flax for linen and other coproducts on 12,000 acres in the state using a cooperative model where farmers would share in the profits.
“Flax is a sustainable alternative in a really toxic industry, and we can make it in Pennsylvania,” says Barr. As fashion and other industries look for sustainable alternatives to petroleum-based products such as polyester and global demand for the light and breathable textile grows as global temperatures continue to rise, increasing production of low-impact linen is in the news. Organic flax requires little irrigation and no chemicals to process, remediates soil and promotes biodiversity. At the processing mill, it is zero waste, meaning that all parts of the crop can be used and sold. While most consumers think of flax for linen for clothing and home
kathleen nicholson webber
goods, it is also a component in biocomposites designed to replace materials like fiberglass, a use category that is growing.
Setting up an industry in Pennsylvania has been daunting because the institutional knowledge, specialized equipment and seeds have been exclusive to Europe for centuries, but a cadre of small-scale area grow-
ers remain undeterred, Barr and de Long among them. Their ambitious goals have drawn the attention of NALA members who see PAFP as the model for expanding the industry in North America.
In the 11 months since the group received the grant, PAFP has worked with the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture to get
flax designated as a specialty crop, thus opening up grant funding for farmers, and has also hired a team of experts: a director of education, Janell Wysock; a director of value chain coordination, Jordan Haddad; a director of development, Evan Reinhardt; and a director of agriculture, Bill Shick. They planted a four-acre test plot at both Pottstown’s Pasture Song Farm , where part two of their three-part producer event series educated farmers on the agronomy of the crop, and Henry Got Crops Farm in Philadelphia. They imported three pieces of harvesting equipment from Belgium, one of three countries (along with France and the Netherlands) where most of the world’s flax is grown. They also traveled to Europe to visit mills and learn from farmers and producers about growing and processing the crop. Locally they are working with partners like Pennsylvania Fibershed , a nonprofit working to connect the fiber and textile communities in Pennsylvania through industry development.
Farmers in the state have expressed in-
terest in growing the crop, and PAFP is working to get the supply chain in place by building a first-stage processing mill in the Philadelphia area. After flax is grown, it has to be processed to be sold on to the global market. Right now flax has to be shipped out of the country to be processed, which is not sustainable. “A common challenge we encounter is the need for more organic markets, which importantly includes adequate processing facilities,” says Catherine Peebles of the Rodale Institute, which supports research into organic farming. “PAFP is addressing this need by building a scutching mill in Pennsylvania, which is vital for developing the fiber flax industry they’ve set out to rebuild.” (To “scutch” is to free usable fibers from a plant’s woody parts by beating.) They will work with farmers “to understand what it takes to grow this crop both agronomically and economically.”
Barr hopes that the mill will be operational by year three of the grant, in 2026. Reinhardt is researching locations and the specialized equipment needed for a mill, and PAFP has
Flax is a sustainable alternative in a really toxic industry, and we can make it in Pennsylvania.”
—heidi barr, PA Flax Project
launched a campaign to raise the money needed to get it operational, since the mill is not covered by the grant. “The scutching mill equipment and mill building itself will be a considerable expense, and we ultimately want the mill to be self-sustaining and not dependent on subsidies,” says Reinhardt, who says it will almost certainly be covered with a mix of public and private funds.
As year two of the grant approaches, Shick, director of agriculture, is working with researchers from Cornell, Rutgers, Penn State and the University of Delaware to do seed trials to ensure that farmers have access to good seed. “Most modern flax varieties have been bred and selected in Europe, in different climates and soil types. We are interested in seeing how they perform here. We imagine the flax industry will be using both imported and domestically-produced varieties in the future.”
PAFP is also working with Brian George of Thomas Jefferson University to create a nonwoven, 100% flax cloth, and Haddad, director of value chain, is cultivating relationships with buyers for the products — fiber and all the coproducts — that will eventually be sold at the mill.
At a January 2025 growers meeting, experts will educate interested farmers on the agronomy of flax and how best to scale production. PAFP hopes to get commitments from farmers and then support them as they roll up their sleeves and start planning.
“We are reimagining an industry that once thrived in several North American regions and has deep roots in Pennsylvania,” Barr says.
Heidi Barr and the PA Flax Project are working to reintroduce flax farming in the United States.
HEALTH the issue
What makes us healthy or unhealthy? Is it how many steps we take in a day? Whether we eat enough whole grains or leafy vegetables? Exercise and diet are important, certainly, but much is beyond our control. ¶ This can be simultaneously comforting and worrisome. We benefit from the public health accomplishments of the past, such as vaccines and laws that ensure clean drinking water. Our genes are locked in at conception, of course, and luck — good or bad — can strike anyone. But we also are stuck with the air that we breathe, and, to a dismaying extent, with disadvantages associated with the racial identities and class statuses we’re born with. ¶ Working together, though, we might still be able to tackle problems that are insurmountable as individuals. ¶ There were already plenty of reasons to fight racism and to lift people out of poverty, but perhaps knowing how these societal ills resonate in our bodies can increase the urgency we feel to cure them. ¶ We can also clean the air, and in this issue we explore how we can do that at home and even at work. Outdoor air pollution might be even harder to address, but monitoring is a start. ¶ We’re not saying you should throw away your running shoes or switch to a cookie-dough diet. But as you read these articles, think about the ways in which our health is in our hands.
T HE DA i Ly Grin D
Public health researcher discusses her book on how unrelenting stress shortens lives story by bernard brown
Who you are determines how well and how long you live. In 2012 the life expectancy for white Philadelphians was 78 years, versus 73 for Black Philadelphians, according to the latest Health of the City Report, proeduced by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health. In 2019 that five-year gap remained, and it widened to six years in 2021 as the COVID-19 pandemic dragged down life expectancies. For Black men in 2021 the expectancy was 65 years. The same report found that a Black person giving birth in Philadelphia is twice as likely to suffer major health complications as a white person. Nationally as well as locally, racial disparities in health and lifespan have been stubbornly persistent, as Arline Geronimus writes in her 2023 book “Weathering: The Extraordinary Stress of Ordinary Life in an Unjust Society,” even as the public health community has thrown every intervention imaginable at the problem.
“If, like many, you find yourself protesting that these decades-long differences are driven by homicides, AIDS and drug overdose deaths … what if you found out that they were primarily accounted for by death from chronic diseases?” Geronimus writes. Could differences in eating or exercise habits explain the illness disparities? No, Geronimus argues. The difference is not behavior. It is stress that wears people down, “weathering” them, as she puts it. Grid spoke with her to learn more.
I’m used to talking and hearing about stress as an individual problem: “My job stresses me out.” “My kids stress me out.” What’s the difference between this way of thinking of stress and what you write about in “Weathering”? A lot of people have that kind of crazy busy stress. You know, “I had to get my daughter to soccer practice, but I also had to be at a meeting, but I also hadn’t bought any groceries and we weren’t going to have dinner.” But though we feel at that moment that maybe we don’t have options, we really do. We have the resources to say, “Well, I’ll just get takeout for dinner.” Also maybe we can take a vacation or a personal day.
For many members of impoverished, working-class or culturally-oppressed groups, the stressors that contribute to weathering are, first of all, unremitting. You don’t have many — if any — options. It could be that you’re exhausted because you worked three jobs because real wages haven’t gone up for you in 50 years but inflation has. You have to code-switch at work and act respectable, even to people who are awful to you. Maybe you’re waiting in winter weather or summer heat for public transportation that doesn’t come and you’re anxious about how you’re going to be late. You’re worried about your kids. Your mom had a stroke and you’re taking care of her, too. There’s no end. You can’t just take a personal day or even a break.
Or, say you’re a young Black person stopped by the police while you’re driving.
Statistically speaking, you’re going to be fine. But, it happens enough that people like you end up dead in an interaction with the police, even if it’s rare, so it makes perfect and reasonable sense that your body goes on alert.
That is not some deficiency. If you grow up in a very stressful world, it’s adaptive to have those street smarts, as we call them a lot of the time. But that alertness and that vigilance also then sets in motion this whole set of physiological processes that, when chronic, weather your body and accelerate your biological aging.
That sounds awful, but how does that translate into people dying younger or having more maternal health problems? While you’re exposed to such stressors, a variety of things automatically happen in your body. This physiological stress response evolved to help our ancestors survive dangerous situations, like tigers coming after them. So you’re overloading your large muscles, including your heart, with oxygenated blood so you can fight or flee.
All your body processes automatically privilege the large muscles. Fats and sugars are mobilized out of storage sites and into your bloodstream so you can continue fueling those large muscles. Proteins in other tissues and organs are broken down to provide continued energy to your large muscles. Immune cells are also mobilized in anticipation of infections. If you’re pregnant carrying a fetus, your body probably is not sending enough nutrients to it while your physiological stress system is aroused because the fetus isn’t going to help you fight or flee — it might even be a drag on your system.
So all your body systems — organs, tissues, down to the cells — are all being chronically stressed. Over time, such persistent stress and high-effort coping with stress erodes your health and makes you more vulnerable to a range of chronic and infectious diseases and conditions, including many that are disabling or life-threatening.
Who is most at risk of weathering and these health effects? Empirically what we have
We’ve presented healthy eating and exercise as the panacea for attaining a long health span. In that time period health disparities have remained large and entrenched.”
ARLINE GERONIMUS
health and of society more broadly for at least the last 50 years. We’ve presented healthy eating and exercise as the panacea for attaining a long health span. In that time period health disparities have remained large and entrenched. Some have grown, so engaging in healthy behavior is, at best, an incomplete way to address health inequity. It’s possible that these programs help a little, but we think of healthy eating — or even stopping smoking, for that matter — as saving you from something that’s going to get you maybe in your 50s or 60s. So you could have lived to 80, but because you’re going to have heart problems in your 50s and 60s, you’re not going to make it to 80. But what’s happening in populations subject to weathering is they’re having heart attacks or strokes or dying in childbirth due to weathering-related erosion and dysregulation of their key body systems in their 30s and 40s, sometimes even in their teens or 20s.
When you identify the causes of health disparities as big social problems like racism and poverty, it strikes me that the solutions are much more political than just telling people to quit smoking or eat more vegetables. Yes, addressing the fundamental causes of weathering is a societal — not an individual — project. But once you analyze the problem of health inequity through a weathering lens, there are many ways — both small and large — that can disrupt weathering in affected, denigrated populations.
found is Black women are — Black Americans in general but Black women in particular. I could imagine that a lot of this is as true among other groups, like Native Americans, but there’s just not the same degree of study to know that. But it can be individuals in any social group.
What does this recognition about the importance of these external stressors and weathering have to say about initiatives that teach healthy habits, like healthy eating programs? That they haven’t worked. That’s been the main approach of public
Many of us have been blinded to or even have erased how highly challenging life is for groups who face material hardship, cultural oppression or toxic environmental exposures in their daily round. To the extent we see some of the impacts of life at the margins, we have these false or incomplete narratives: “Well, they just didn’t eat well,” or “They didn’t get a good education, so they don’t understand how important this is,” or “She’s just clearly not a good mother.” We’ve become too satisfied with those superficial and stereotypical, even racist, explanations. But the science is there to inform more effective and just solutions. ◆
Ev E ry Br EATH W E TA k E
A community air quality monitoring program seeks to raise awareness about pollution in West Philadelphia
story by jenny roberts
Jennifer skirkanich updated her kitchen exhaust fan after an air quality monitor reminded her just how dangerous cooking can be.
“You don’t ever think about it, but seeing the light turn red is like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s harmful,’” says Skirkanich, a biologist and West Philadelphia resident who teaches at Bryn Mawr College.
Skirkanich’s air quality monitor was picking up on particulate matter, a mixture of solid particles and liquid droplets in the air that, when inhaled, can cause respiratory and cardiac problems, such as asthma and heart disease.
Cooking on a gas stove or accidentally burning a meal can increase the levels of particulate matter in the air.
“You forget how often you have activities in your house that produce harmful effects,” says Skirkanich, a participant in the Over-
brook Breathe Right Community Air Monitoring Project.
Skirkanich’s home is one of seven that will have at least one monitor deployed on the premises for the next year. Eight nonresidential properties also have monitors.
The goal of the project is to increase awareness about air pollution impacting certain West Philly communities, including Mantua, Mill Creek, Overbrook and Wynnefield. The project targets the zip codes 19151, 19131, 19139 and 19104.
Overbrook Environmental Education Center (OEEC) is running the air quality monitoring project, which is funded with a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. The center is working with researchers at Drexel and Villanova universities — sub-awardees of the grant — on the data analysis and lab work components of the project.
“This grant is focused on understanding air quality at a very hyperlocal level in West Philadelphia, which has historically been an environmental justice community,” says Vicki Jagdeo, environmental educator and program coordinator at OEEC.
“It has years of disinvestment, higher rates of asthma, just a lot of traffic [and] industrial facilities,” she explains. “When we look at West Philadelphia right now, we see a lot of development. I think that’s also contributing to a lot of the air pollution in the area.”
All 15 air monitoring sites across West Philly have outdoor monitors, and five of the sites have monitors indoors too.
“We wanted to have a lot of them outdoors because I think that’s where people spend a lot of their time navigating, commuting, doing things recreationally,” says Jagdeo. “I think it’s important for us to understand.”
Nonresidential sites with monitors include the Philade lphia Zoo, Mill Creek Urban Farm and the 4th District Container Village, an outdoor shopping center and small business incubator.
The monitors were installed in July and will likely remain in place until the fall of 2025, when data analysis will begin.
As part of the project, nine of the sites are also using a passive sampling device to monitor trace gasses in the air, including nitrogen dioxide, nitric oxide, sulfur dioxide and ozone. These pollutants can also negatively impact people’s respiratory and cardiac health.
The passive sampling is confined to two two-week periods, one this past summer and one next spring.
Jagdeo says it’s too early to have a full picture of what the project’s data shows. No significant differences have surfaced so far between the 15 air monitoring locations, she says, but there has been a decrease in overall air quality moving into the fall.
Eventually, the project will have focus groups to discuss how community members can mitigate air pollution.
“The Overbrook Center truly cares about the community,” Jagdeo says, explaining that the project’s ultimate goal is to “empower the community to have advocacy around air quality.”
Vicki Jagdeo of the Overbrook Environmental Education Center hopes to increase awareness of pollution by monitoring air quality.
Mount Airy Candle Co. is proud to collaborate with the Ronald McDonald House of Philadelphia, as they celebrate 50 years of providing care to families.
In honor of the 50th anniversary, we are launching the ‘Welcome Home’ signature candle - featuring notes of sea salt, light musk and a relaxing hint of mint.
50% of proceeds from the sale of each Welcome Home candle will be donated back to RMHC Philly. Scan the QR code to learn more and purchase yours today!
“Uns A f E AT Any L E v EL”
Pennsylvania
school districts aren’t doing enough to protect students from lead in drinking water
story by sj punderson
Arecent PennEnvironment renport found that Pennsylvania school districts are failing to keep lead out of school drinking water. Grid spoke with the executive director of PennEnvironment, David Masur, to learn more.
Why should people be concerned about lead in school drinking water? Lead is unsafe at any level, especially for kids. There’s no “safe” amount of lead in drinking water. The current standards set by the EPA allow up to 10 parts per billion (ppb) of lead, but that number is based on politics, not health. The American Academy of Pediatrics says drinking water for kids should contain no more than 1 ppb. So when a school district tells PennEnvironment they’re “within the legal limit,” that they’re “only” finding lead levels of 8 or 9 ppb, that’s still much more lead than what’s truly safe for children.
Why is it so hard to keep lead out of drinking water? Lead is unpredictable. It doesn’t just “stay put” in pipes. Environmental factors
can cause it to leach into the water at any time. For example, one Philadelphia school found low levels of lead in 2016. But by 2019, that same fountain had levels hundreds of times higher than health standards. It’s like playing Whac-A-Mole. Testing won’t always reveal the full picture because lead can spike between tests. That’s why we recommend replacing fixtures rather than relying on spot testing.
Aren’t schools required to test drinking water for lead? Actually, no. School buildings aren’t covered under the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. There’s no federal requirement for schools to test drinking water or report the results to the public. Pennsylvania also has weak testing standards. So when schools say, “We comply with all the laws,” they’re meeting a pretty low bar. They might only be testing one or two outlets. That’s like looking at just one corner of your house to see if you have bedbugs. It doesn’t give the whole picture.
How common is lead contamination in schools? Lead is everywhere — in rural,
suburban and urban schools across Pennsylvania. It’s a bipartisan issue. But historically, many schools, especially in suburban areas, have flown under the radar. Most people can’t even name a single school board member or the superintendent of their district. That lack of accountability has allowed districts to stick with outdated practices.
Why don’t more districts replace their drinking fountains with lead-filtering hydration stations? Many districts say it’s too expensive. But data shows it’s actually very affordable. Hydration stations that filter lead, PFAS and microplastics cost between $2,500 and $3,000 each. Most districts could replace every drinking fountain for less than 0.1% of their yearly budget. It’s not a huge lift financially.
So why haven’t more districts acted? Part of it is fear. Admitting there’s a problem with lead in drinking water could make people angry. But parents are going to be even more upset if they find out the district knew about it and did nothing. Another challenge is that some school districts just don’t like being told what to do. They’ve operated independently for so long, and they want to keep doing things their way.
Are there examples of districts taking proactive steps? Yes, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are both setting the standard. Philly’s City Council closed the loopholes that allowed the school district to avoid testing. And in Pittsburgh, they just completed a multiyear program to replace fountains with lead-filtering hydration stations. If big districts like these can do it, so can smaller dis-
What’s the best solution moving for-
The simplest and most effective solution is to install hydration stations with certified lead filters. New models can filter out not just lead but also PFAS and microplastics, which is a huge health win. The technology has come a long way, and schools have options to fix this once and for all. ◆
PennEnvironment’s David Masur says school districts have the tools to get lead out of their drinking water today.
NITROGEN DIOXIDE (NO 2 )
L ET T HE
Air O UT
Simple steps you can take to improve your household air quality when cooking
story by sophia d. merow
The same blue flame that imparts the sense that gas cooking is real cooking also accounts for the health hazards posed by the appliance found in approximately one third of American homes. “When you have a gas stove,” Drexel University environmental epidemiologist Josiah Kephart told NPR in 2021, “combustion is actually occurring right in your kitchen.”
In-kitchen combustion of natural gas produces pollutants galore — fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, the potent greenhouse gas methane, carcinogens including benzene and formaldehyde — but one chemical in particular has been raising red flags lately because of its negative health impacts: nitrogen dioxide (NO2 ). A February 2022 study found that after mere minutes of
ACROLEIN BENZENE
CARBON MONOXIDE
Encourage people with elevated risk to stay out of the kitchen during cooking
A December 2022 paper attributed 12.7% of current childhood asthma cases in the United States to gas stove use.
gas stove use in a poorly ventilated space, NO 2 levels indoors can surpass the one-hour outdoor exposure limit of 100 parts per billion set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Even low-level exposure to NO2 is associated with intensified asthma attacks, increased susceptibility to respiratory infections and decreased lung function in those with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). A December 2022 paper attributed 12.7% of current childhood asthma cases in the United States to gas stove use.
METHANE
Run an air purifier suitable for the
The most definitive way to address the ill effects — for people and the planet — of a gas stove is to replace it with an electric or induction one. (Gas stoves emit methane even when turned off, so just idling the range won’t do the trick on the climate change front.) Renters typically can’t influence appliance choice, however, and homeowners may find the price of switching prohibitively steep, even with the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) incentives on offer. (Depending on your income, you could qualify for a rebate of up to $840 for the purchase of an electric or induction stove, plus up to $500 to help offset conversion costs. Swapping gas for electric could necessitate an electrical panel upgrade, for which there’s an IRA tax credit of up to $4,000.)
To lessen the harm while still sharing living space with a gas range, consider the following:
• If you have a hood or exhaust fan, use it every time a burner is lit. If you don’t currently have a hood or fan but it is feasible to install one, do so. Ensure that the hood/fan vents outdoors.
• Weather permitting, open windows when cooking and run a box or ceiling fan to push indoor air out.
• Use an air purifier. Choose a model with a high clean air delivery rate matched to the size of the room in question.
• Opt for meals that use fewer burners and/or lower heat. Regardless of a stove’s heat source, cooking food — especially via such hightemperature methods as sautéing, frying or searing — can produce such toxins and irritants as acrolein, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and particulate matter, which means you should ventilate even if cooking with electric.
• Use a supplementary appliance — a portable induction cooktop or an electric kettle, pressure cooker, toaster oven or microwave — when possible.
• Encourage household members at elevated risk — children, the elderly, those with respiratory conditions — to stay out of the kitchen during meal prep.
Cook meals that avoid frying, sautéing or searing
Use window ventilation during warmer months Use a portable induction cooktop when possible
If you have one, always use a range hood that vents to the outdoors
size of the room
yOU B ET yOU r Lif E
Casino workers, with the help of United Auto Workers, are fighting to close the loophole that allows for indoor smoking. Threatening job losses, the industry and other unions want to keep it
story by rebecca mccarthy
Walk into live! c asino in south philly on a Saturday night, and the smell of cigarettes hits you immediately. The Clean Indoor Air Act prohibiting smoking in Pennsylvania establishments passed in 2008, but casinos remain a notable loophole — one of the last bastions of the old, vice-friendly service industry. They’re open 24 hours, they’re always serving drinks and they’ll do everything in their power to keep their customers from stepping outside, even just for a moment.
Smoke permeates the casino floor to such an extreme extent that workers say local painters and carpet companies, who are frequently tasked with covering up smoke damage, are actively invested in keeping the smoking loophole in place for fear of losing out on business. One slot attendant at Harrah’s Philadelphia describes repairing machines that failed to pay out. Inside each slot machine is a bill validator with a delicate sensor that reads the money it receives. Generally, when a machine needs fixing, the sensor is the problem. “There’s ash all over, so the sensor can’t read the bill,” he said. “When I say a lot of ash, I mean, it’s almost like someone got an ashtray and just dumped it in there.”
Although 20 states have outlawed indoor smoking entirely, the loophole persists in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. More than 1,300 venues are exempt in Pennsylvania alone, but during the pandemic, all of that changed. Gambling takes a real toll on the health of those who become addicted, making them easy pickings for the likes of COVID-19. A state-sponsored study in Massachusetts this year found that although problem gamblers account for only 9.9% of the population, they’re responsible for 90% of casino revenue. They also tend to have health problems that would put them at a higher risk of hospitalization should they catch the virus: a 2005 study found that problem gamblers were at an increased risk of hypertension, cardiovascular disease and peptic ulcer disease. And then there’s the smoke. A 2009 study found that 60% of people with a gambling addiction are smokers. Secondhand smoke is known to not only cause heart disease, strokes and lung cancer but also aggravate many preexisting health problems. Casino workers say that, for years, they’ve watched coworkers who never smoked a day in their lives develop lung cancer.
In the initial flurry of COVID-19 regulations, casinos were shut down entirely, and when they reopened in June 2020, it was with a mask mandate. Smokers were asked to step outside, which was a welcome reprieve for long-suffering casino employees.
The “silver lining to COVID [was that] the fresh air came,” said Jennifer Rubolino, a table games dealer in Pittsburgh. Rubolino had been working as a teller in off-track betting for years and moved into casinos because she liked working with people. The smoking aggravated her asthma, though, and she had to seek a special health dispensation.
“Many of us haven’t had to deal with secondhand smoke in our workplaces, maybe for 20 years or more, but for casino workers and other hospitality workers that have been left behind, this is still their daily nightmare,” said Bronson Frick, director of advocacy at Americans Nonsmokers’ Rights Foundation Establishments that go nonsmoking, he said, see “literally overnight improvement in public health outcomes.” A 2023 poll found that 74% of Philadelphia-area adults were more likely to go to a casino if it was smoke-free, suggesting that business could actually increase if the loophole were closed.
Unfortunately, that poll hasn’t played well with industry executives. “If [the casino] had their way, they wouldn’t want you to get up and go to the bathroom,” said Nicole Vitola. Vitola has been working in casinos for 27 years, first at the Golden Nugget (then Trump’s Castle) and now at the Borgata in Atlantic City. She’s also the cofounder of Casino Employees Against Smoking Effects (CEASE), a coalition that began in Atlantic City and has since expanded to seven states, including Pennsylvania.
As the vaccine made its way around the country in 2021, smoking returned to casinos. “I panicked,” Vitola said. “I couldn’t believe that they were just going to resume as usual.” After a sparsely attended boardwalk rally sponsored by an anti-smoking organization, Vitola founded CEASE because she felt the messaging would be more effective coming from the affected employees themselves, who understood the tricks of the trade better than outside advocates. “Everybody hates the smoking,” said Lamont White, a CEASE member, who has worked as a dealer in Atlantic City for 35 years.
The casinos are “diabolical,” said Mike, a dealer at a casino in Philadelphia, who previously worked in Atlantic City for 18 years. When smoking did return to A.C. casinos, it was the Fourth of July weekend, he explained, which is an especially busy time for the city. All the rooms were booked well in advance, so bringing back smoking that weekend allowed the casino to argue that business was better with the loophole in place, establishing a false precedent that would help them fight the clean air campaign they knew was coming.
Tricks like these, Mike says, are standard
across the casino industry. According to the smoking loophole, 75% of a casino floor needs to be smoke-free. “There are sections of the casino that only open on weekends, which is [when] they do the bulk of their business,” he said. “So if you go in there any random weekday, the entire wing of the casino that’s closed is the nonsmoking section. That entire area over there, with no games open? That’s a nonsmoking section.”
In January, New Jersey State Assemblyman William F. Moen Jr. introduced a bill that would ban smoking in New Jersey casinos, but as of this writing the bill was still sitting in the Senate committee. Frustrated with the lack of progress, United Auto Workers (UAW), which represents dealers at Bally’s, Caesars and Tropicana, filed a lawsuit in April arguing that the smoking loophole was at odds with casino workers’ constitutional right to a safe workplace. The judge disagreed, ruling that “reliance on a constitutional right to safety is not well-settled law.”
For now, the judge’s ruling represents a major win for the casino and tobacco industries — when it comes to casinos, Atlantic
City sets the standard on the East Coast — but workers are pressing forward with the campaign despite the headwinds. Assembly Republican Whip Brian Bergen chided legislators in mid-November after the Tourism, Gaming and the Arts Committee once again
A 2009 s TUDy f OU n D THAT
failed to add the smoking bill to the agenda, calling it “an insult. There is enough support from both sides of the aisle to advance this bill … Casino employees have waited long enough for a healthy workplace.”
Another anti-smoking bill has been
Mike, a dealer at a Philadelphia casino, says the management exploits loopholes and plays tricks with sales statistics to make smoking seem indispensable to the business.
languishing in limbo in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as well. State Representative Dan Frankel of Pittsburgh argued against the smoking loophole when the Clean Indoor Air Act was passed in 2008, and ever since he has been looking for a way to close it. In 2023, he introduced a bill that would ban smoking in all Pennsylvania casinos; it passed the House and will likely be considered by the Senate in 2025.
“It’s inexplicable to me that businesses like these casinos would put their employees in a position where their health is jeopardized,” said Rep. Frankel. “I don’t get why they aren’t even voluntarily moving in this direction in order to protect the health of not just their employees, but their patrons as well … The science is indisputable with respect to how secondhand smoke impacts people’s health.” He pointed out that Parx Casino — which is just outside Philly in Bensalem, Bucks County — banned smoking some time ago and is consistently listed as the most profitable casino in the state.
“We were worried that when we didn’t have smoking and the competition did that
we’d see some loss in revenue,” said Marc Oppenheimer, chief marketing officer of Parx. “What we saw was some loss of players. No question, there were some people that went to the competition, because we were nonsmoking, but there were other people that started coming to us because we were nonsmoking. The net effect ended up being very little impact on revenue, but our employee morale went way up. Our customer satisfaction scores went up, because one of the five biggest [complaints] we had always had was the building smells too much like smoke.”
Eliminating smoking also presented other, less obvious benefits, Oppenheimer said. The casino is no longer switching out the carpet to keep the smell of smoke at bay, nor do they have to replace slot machine seat covers pockmarked with cigarette burns. Even the machinery functions better, and chips and cards no longer need to be replaced due to smoke residue. “It’s been four and a half years since we did our last carpet change,” he said.
According to a 2022 National Health Interview Survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), conventional tobacco use has been steadily declining, and
11.6% of the population smoke cigarettes. Even some of the organizations that initially lobbied for the smoking loophole in 2008, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) posts, are now lobbying to close it, arguing that the loophole puts pressure on qualifying businesses to allow smoking inside for fear of losing customers. “While the Pennsylvania VFW respects the rights of veterans to smoke, we also respect the rights of the many more veterans who do not smoke,” said Dwight Fuhrman, department commander of Post 8896 in East Berlin, Adams County, in a 2018 statement. “We want to attract and support not only veterans of all ages but also their family members.”
Casino executives in Atlantic City have argued that they’ll lose business to Pennsylvania if they ban smoking. “An immediate and complete smoking ban, while smoking is still permitted in casinos in Pennsylvania, against the backdrop of an already weakened and worsening economic climate, would hurt working-class people, endanger tens of thousands of jobs and jeopardize the millions of dollars in tax revenue dedicated to New Jersey seniors and people with disabilities, as validated by multiple in-
dependent studies,” Mark Giannantonio, executive director of Resorts Casino and the president of the Casino Association of New Jersey, told New Jersey Monthly in June. Even UNITE HERE, the union that represents bartenders, servers, room attendants and other casino workers, has argued in favor of keeping the loophole in place. When Donna DeCaprio took over as president of UNITE HERE Local 54, she described a smoking ban in New Jersey casinos as “a suicide pact,” arguing that it would result in job losses. She told WHYY that 50% to 72% of in-person gambling revenue came from the smoking sections.
The UAW — which has been representing CEASE casino workers in court, although they are not UAW members — has argued that the Local 54 should be protecting their workers’ health rather than the interests of casinos. UAW officials announced in September that they would be leaving the New Jersey chapter of the AFL-CIO because of what they characterized as gross negligence.
“Six other unions came out against us, to fight us to keep smoking in the casinos,” said Ray Jensen Jr., assistant director of UAW Region 9. “The AFL-CIO is supposed to be a mediator … They refused to even get us a meeting with the other unions … They just basically abandoned us and let our workers suffer from secondhand smoke.”
Most casino jobs are union, which is what makes them so attractive. The service industry is marked by volatility, and casinos offer stability, job security, good wages and seniority for longtime workers — a rarity in an industry where employees are often pushed out as they age. But the dealers aren’t covered by a union; they earn a tipped mini-
mum wage, which is currently $2.83 an hour in Pennsylvania. This makes the casinos’ concerns about business lost over closing the smoking loophole particularly frustrating for dealers. As most of their income comes from tips, they’re just as invested in keeping the tables busy as casino executives, and these companies are paying them next to nothing to risk their health. “We’re still willing to fight against having smokers in there,” said Vitola. “We’re more fearful of our health and not being able to work.”
While waitresses and slot attendants can sometimes manage to pass through the smokiest areas of the casino quickly, dealers are chained to the table. “We can’t walk away,” said P.J. Naccarelli, a dealer at the Borgata in Atlantic City. Customers are “elbow to elbow with us, staring at us, blowing smoke directly into our faces. We can’t even turn our heads, because we have millions of dollars of chips in front of us at any given time. People who don’t frequent casinos don’t understand.” Vitola has two children, and worked through both her pregnancies. Whatever the outcome, casino workers say they’ll keep fighting. They don’t have a choice; their lives are at stake. A competing, compromise bill, which would continue to allow smoking in unenclosed areas of a casino but stipulate that no worker could be assigned to an enclosed smoking room against their will, was dismissed outright by Jensen. “UAW will never compromise on our workers’ health and safety. What’s going to happen is nobody is going to volunteer, and then the lowest seniority person is going to get ‘voluntold,’” he said. “And if they refuse, they’re going to get sent home and they don’t get to work. They’re making a choice between their health and a paycheck; that’s not fair.” UAW recently launched a campaign featuring the children of CEASE workers talking about their concern for their parents’ health.
“We know people are dying,” said Naccarelli. “Workers are getting sick and getting diagnosed with cancer and emphysema … It’s crazy for them to keep saying, ‘Now’s not the right time.’ If I had the opportunity to save someone’s life, would I say, ‘No, you know what? It’s not the right time for you. I’m not going to save you, I’m going to just ignore it.’” ◆
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BEAUTY
Hair Vyce Studio
Multicultural hair salon located in University City servicing West Philly & South Jersey since 2013. We specialize in premier hair cuts, color & natural hair for all ages. (215) 921-9770 hairvyce.com
BIKE SHOP
Trophy Bikes
We specialize in the ingenious Brompton Bicycle, made & designed in London to save you time — and space — with its fast, compact fold. Open Wed-Sat, 12-6 pm at 133 S. 23rd St. On the Web @trophybikes
BOOK STORE
Books & Stuff
They can ban books in our libraries and schools, but they can’t ban the books in your home library. Grow your home library! Black woman-owned online shop for children, teens & adults. booksandstuff.info
COMPOSTING
Back to Earth Compost Crew
Residential curbside compost pickup, commercial pick-up, five collection sites & compost education workshops. Montgomery County & parts of Chester County. First month free trial. backtoearthcompost.com
Bennett Compost
The area’s longest running organics collection service (est 2009) serving all of Philadelphia with residential and commercial pickups and locally-made soil products. 215.520.2406 bennettcompost.com
Circle Compost
We’re a woman-owned hyper-local business. We offer 2 or 5 gallon buckets & haul with e-bikes & motor vehicles. We offer finished compost, lawn waste pickups & commercial services. 30 day free trial! circlecompost.com
EATS
The Franklin Fountain
The Franklin Fountain now offers returnable reusable pints of ice cream in Vanilla Bean, Chocolate & Caramelized Banana! Our ice cream is made with PA dairy & all natural ingredients. franklinfountain.com
EDUCATION
Kimberton Waldorf School
A holistic education for students in preschool12th grade. Emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, nature, the arts & experiential learning. Register for an Open House! (610) 933-3635 kimberton.org
ELECTRICIAN
Echo House Electric
Local electrician who works to provide high-quality results on private & public sector projects including old buildings, new construction, residential, commercial & institutional. Minority business. echohouseelectric.com
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FARM
Hope Hill Lavender Farm
Established in 2011, our farm offers shopping for made-on-premise lavender products in a scenic environment. Honey, bath & body, teas, candles, lavender essential oil and more. hopehilllavenderfarm.com
FASHION
Philly AIDS Thrift
As a nonprofit thrift store, our goal is to sell the lovely, useful items that people donate & distribute the proceeds to local organizations involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS. phillyaidsthrift.com
Stitch And Destroy
STITCH AND DESTROY creates upcycled alternative fashions & accessories from pre-loved clothing & textile waste. Shop vintage, books, recycled wares & original fashions. 523 S 4th St. stitchanddestroy.com
GREEN BURIAL
Laurel Hill
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Holistic Home LLC
Philly’s original green cleaning service, est 2010. Handmade & hypoallergenic products w/ natural ingredients & essential oils. Safe for kids, pets & our cleaners. 215-421-4050 HolisticHomeLLC@gmail.com
GROCERY
Kimberton Whole Foods
A family-owned and operated natural grocery store with seven locations in Southeastern PA, selling local, organic and sustainably-grown food for over thirty years. kimbertonwholefoods.com
MAKERS
Mount Airy Candle Co.
Makers of uniquely scented candles, handcrafted perfumery and body care products. Follow us on Instagram @mountairycandleco and find us at retailers throughout the region. mountairycandle.com
Tombino.shop
Manhole Covers from the world over permanently etched into Functional Art. Cork Coasters, Trivets. Wood Magnets & Wall Art. Hand-drawn & Handmade in Philadelphia. From Aalborg to Zurich get your city! tombino.shop
RECYCLING
Philadelphia Recycling Company
Full service recycling company for office buildings, manufacturing & industrial. Offering demo & removal + paper, plastics, metals, furniture, electronics, oils, wood & batteries philadelphiarecycling.co
WELLNESS
Center City Breathe
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“I knew the Environmental Sustainability concentration was right for me. It offered a diverse pool of classes—corporate-focused classes and business classes—and you can tailor the concentration to suit the industry you want. Corporate sustainability is so much fun. I’m grateful to wake up every day and work in an industry I love. And I’m excited to see where the industry goes in the future.”
Donato Grimaldi, MES ’23
Corporate social responsibility project engineer for an international label and packaging company
