Four years ago, while I was a reporter at USA TODAY, I was tasked with looking into how climate change was impacting sewer systems in major cities across the United States. I had some prior knowledge of “combined sewers”— archaic sewer systems that combine stormwater and household sewage in the same pipes, and then overflow into waterways when it rains— but the year-long reporting process became an education.
While working as a national reporter, I always looked for opportunities to integrate reporting from my adopted city of Philadelphia. The USAT story appeared to offer just that. A major critique of the piece was that the common way of addressing combined sewers wasn’t equipped to deal with climate change. Cities were spending billions of dollars to build massive underground tunnels that temporarily stored excess sewage water instead of allowing it to overflow into rivers. But they were often designed based on past precipitation patterns, and thus risked becoming instantly “obsolete” once constructed, as climate change brought along more frequent and intense storms. In truth, that was a bit of a misnomer: they did risk technically falling short of regulatory requirements due to climate change, but they pretty much guaranteed a massive reduction in sewage overflows from baseline conditions.
Philly appeared to have an even better solution though. Created in 2011, its “Green City, Clean Waters” program was the first of its kind. Instead of tunnels, it would install thousands of pieces of “green infrastructure” all across the city to capture stormwater and prevent it from overwhelming sewer lines in the first place. The main benefit for the purpose of my USAT piece was that it was climate proof— “you can always build more rain gardens,” as climate change progressed, the thinking went.
Plus, it had a bunch of side benefits like beautification, heat dissipation, and the support of a local workforce. That’s a lot to like, and Philly’s program had received overwhelmingly positive press throughout its first decade.
My first hint that the program might not be as rosy as advertised was when I reached out to PWD for the USAT piece and basically asked, “show me the beef.” I always like to ground my reporting with hard data. It’s been some years, but my recollection was that I asked for data demonstrating a reduction in sewage overflows and thus water quality improvements, and wasn’t convinced by anything I received back. I filed it under “hmm…,” reduced the role of Philly in the story to a quick mention, and moved on.
Sometime over the next year, I learned that the street I live on in Mt. Airy is served by a combined sewer line. In fact, it’s serviced by the buried Wingohocking Creek, which is now the city’s largest and most polluting sewer line, running all the way across the top of Philadelphia before emptying into the Frankford Creek. Trying to be a good citizen, I reached out to the PWD’s “Rain Check” program, which offers free rain barrels and deep discounts on green infrastructure solutions like downspout planters and permeable pavers. I don’t want to spill a lot of ink on my experiences, but several professionals I interacted with through the course of this endeavor quietly warned me about some of the drawbacks. Other conversations since have added to it: rain barrels often remain full from storm to storm, or end up disconnected. Permeable pavers can clog easily and require pretty regular maintenance. They, along with downspout planters, can also create drainage issues and even property damage if not installed or maintained correctly.
I ended up just going with a rain barrel, which I set up best I could to use regularly by having it gravity feed a dripline in my garden. Even still, I can attest many a rainstorm goes by before I have a chance to empty it. It was a limited anecdote, but it added to my questions about green infrastructure.
A chance to dig deeper
After moving to a fulltime freelancing role in early 2023 and linking up with Grid magazine in the city, I quickly pitched editor Bernard Brown on an idea. Green City, Clean Waters was at the halfway mark of its 25-year lifespan, and I felt it deserved a detailed examination. Turns out, Bernard had similar experiences leaving him with similar questions, as retold in a recent Grid editorial. With financial and editorial assistance from the Chestnut Hill Local and Delaware Currents, my deep look at the program began.
A first piece published late last year opened the door. This was less investigative and more enterprising. Personally, the most significant thing I found was that there were a number of people in the space who had pretty deep concerns about the program, and weren’t that hard to find once one cared to look. I won’t enumerate their concerns here since they’re all in the piece, but the gist was that there were indications the program’s performance may be inadequate and would not get the health of our waterways where they need to be by the program’s scheduled conclusion in 2036. Meanwhile, some neighborhoods like Germantown that could really use a tunnel to reduce flood damages and sewer backups, seemed to be left in limbo.
After that piece published, I had a number of ideas of where to go next, but one solidified itself rather quickly. Since a major part of Green City, Clean Water’s pitch was that it would be cheaper than traditional tunnels, I was curious about what it was actually costing. That line of inquiry quickly raced to the front when a number of current PWD employees reached out to me to share deep concerns and then actual information about its costs. Suddenly I finally had some verifiable data that began answering some of the questions raised in the first piece: indeed, costs of the program had risen by billions of dollars, while estimates of what it would cost to install tunnels steeply fell. That formed the basis of my latest report on the topic, published this month by Grid, The Chestnut Hill Local, and Delaware Currents.
Weighing the pros and cons
While preparing to run the latest story, I realized that it would probably piss a lot of “supporters “of the program off, including past and present PWD sources I had developed professional relationships with, some of them for years. That wasn’t an easy thing for me to swallow by any means, but that’s the price of journalism sometimes. For me, it was more important to raise hard questions about the performance of a multi-billion-dollar program funded primarily by Philadelphians through their water bills than try to keep my bridges nonconflagrated.
Through various means, the criticism of my work I’ve heard so far deals not with the accuracy of the reporting but the framing. “Bias” seems to be operative word. Basically, that green infrastructure does a lot of good and there’s a lot of people doing good work and the reporting ignores all that to tear down green infrastructure and the program.
It’s hard to identify one’s own “bias,” so on principle I won’t dismiss this out of hand. Personally though, I feel like I constantly question my own assumptions and conclusions. I recognize that green infrastructure indeed has tons of benefits. I love riding my bike by the PWD rain gardens in my neighborhood; they’re cool. I am currently reporting out a story on heat adaptation, and planting trees and green spaces is pretty much the best tool we have. Hell, I moved from Philly’s urban core to the NW in large part for the trees: very elitist to then turn around and suggest the city should reduce its spending to green other neighborhoods as well. Again, I started off this whole journey with an understanding that this program was the best thing around. I still understand some of its inherent benefits. That doesn’t feel to me like bias.
But, for every time I got bogged down in doubt, there was something that reinforced I was onto something. Primarily, this was interviews with experts in the space, who constantly surprised me. “Green” groups who spoke on and off the record about their concerns. Verification that those in the regulatory community had concerns. The information and perspective of PWD employees. Even “supporters” of green infrastructure who admitted the shortcomings but justified them as being part of the process.
In the end, it was just my judgement this program needed a critical examination, for the public good. Green City, Clean Waters has received plenty of positive press. Anyone who has half paid attention knows all of the benefits inside and out. I figured, inject what appear to me to be valid and previously unreported counterpoints, and let the conversation advance.
To start summing things up, there are two equally implausible scenarios here: that this program is 100% a success, or 100% a failure. Almost certainly, the truth lies somewhere in between.
And, equally implausible is that a 100% green infrastructure approach is the best way to go, or a 100% gray approach is the way to go. Almost certainly, the right mix is somewhere in between.
Indeed, this is a criticism supporters of the program have made of my work: that GCCW spends money on both, and is flexible, and that’s an essential fact I have not given its due.
I’d argue otherwise. I did the math on the original proposal (70% green, 15% gray, 15% flexible), and reported that in both stories. Unfortunately, there’s no way I’ve found to determine if that ratio has indeed held true over the past 12 years. There’s no way I’ve found to determine what PWD has concluded about the cost-benefit of these approaches, which would seem to me extremely helpful in having a conversation about whether the program’s design is truly working or not. We don’t even know what the utility is currently spending on each category, so how can we begin to assess if it’s the right mix?
Here’s a question I sent to PWD last October:
“The original plan states that PWD anticipated investing approximately $1.7 billion in GSI, $345M in treatment plant upgrades, and $420M into a flexible spending category. Are these figures and ratios still more or less accurate: if so, what decisions if any has PWD made re: what to spend the $420M flexible money on?”
I never received an answer. To this and several other pertinent questions. Why? I don’t know. So, I try to scratch out answers best I can, at the risk of my sources and accusations of bias.
Tips and feedback welcome: Kyle.Bagenstose@gmail.com
Kyle Bagenstose 