6.22
Water
What would it take to make the Delaware ‘swimmable’?
What would it take to make the Delaware ‘swimmable’?
With funding from the William Penn Foundation, the Water Center at Penn is investigating questions of water quality, access, and equity.
Design travels to South Carolina to plan more protective urban coastlines
Design travels to South Carolina to plan more protective urban coastlines
A Weitzman School team is working with the city of Charleston on an urban seawall plan that combines natural elements with structural systems that respond to the local conditions of the city’s shoreline.
How to make progress for Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers
How to make progress for Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers
The Water Center at Penn has completed the first phase of a high-level study of the challenges and opportunities for water resource management in Pittsburgh’s Three Rivers Region.
How to make a better water filter? Turn it inside out
How to make a better water filter? Turn it inside out
Penn engineers describe a novel approach for making antimicrobial nanoscale water filters while demonstrating new approaches that can be used to develop a broad range of materials.
Relieving water scarcity, one home at a time
Relieving water scarcity, one home at a time
Due to a rapidly depleting underground aquifer, many residents of Mexico City are left with little-to-no easily accessible clean water for hours or days at a time. This summer, members of the Penn chapter of Isla Urbana helped install rainwater harvesting and filtration systems to provide residents of the Mexican capital with clean water year-round.
Toxins from the tap
Toxins from the tap
In Pennsylvania and hundreds of other locations around the country, manmade chemicals known as PFAS have been found in drinking water. Howard Neukrug discusses the potential harm, how local and federal agencies are responding, and the many related questions that remain unanswered.
Keeping rain out of the drain
Keeping rain out of the drain
From cisterns beneath Shoemaker Green to the green roof on New College House, special features of campus buildings and landscapes are helping manage stormwater to keep rain from the sewer lines, and scholars are using the infrastructure as a research opportunity.
A sense of place on shifting shores
A sense of place on shifting shores
Roderick Coover, whose work merges cinema, science, and history, is the 2019 Mellon Artist-in-Residence for the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities (PPEH). His recent film “Toxi-City: A Climate Change Narrative” screened at PPEH’s “Teaching and Learning with Rising Waters” event.
Putting mussels to the test
Putting mussels to the test
With a mussel hatchery in the future for the Schuylkill River, students in Byron Sherwood’s field biology course used scientific rigor to ask how effectively these filter feeders might render the water clean.
Supporting the Schuylkill
Supporting the Schuylkill
Penn President Amy Gutmann joined city officials and local college leaders along Boathouse Row to announce support to fund the dredging of the Schuylkill River.
In the News
NBC Philadelphia
Philly’s drinking water threatened by climate change
Howard Neukrug of the School of Arts and Sciences spoke about the potential effects of climate change on Philadelphia’s water supply. “We’ve seen a lot of one in one-hundred-year events occurring back to back,” says Neukrug.
FULL STORY →
The Washington Post
On ‘Day Zero,’ Cape Town Will Run Out of Water. It’s Not the Only City at Risk.
Scott Moore of the School of Arts and Sciences writes about the Cape Town water crisis and how it is spreading to other areas.
FULL STORY →