4/16
Water
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.
The future of urban waters
The future of urban waters
Students and faculty of the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities’ Liquid Histories course study the impact of rising sea levels from the banks of Philadelphia and Mumbai.
Navigating urban waters, with an interdisciplinary approach
Navigating urban waters, with an interdisciplinary approach
With independent research projects and immersive experiences on and near Philadelphia’s waterways, summer fellows with the Penn Program in the Environmental Humanities are collaborating to develop new ways of learning and sharing knowledge.
In the News
Philadelphia Inquirer
Cool for the summer
Joseph Wharton, founder of the Wharton School is referenced for having influenced Philadelphia’s sources of drinking water. Wharton proposed building a series of canals and lakes from the Pine Barrens, channeling the water west, into a pipe that would cross beneath the Delaware, into Philadelphia.
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WHYY (Philadelphia)
Climate change could threaten Philly’s drinking water
Allison Lassiter of the Weitzman School of Design discusses the options for protecting Philadelphia drinking water if rising seas and drought threaten sections of the Delaware River.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
From the U.N. climate conference, advice for Philly as it adapts to global warming
A delegation of Penn students, researchers, and faculty who attended the COP27 climate conference offer their ideas for how Philadelphia officials can work to make the goals of the Paris Agreement a reality.
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WHYY-Radio (Philadelphia)
Delaware Valley experts, residents call ‘forever chemical’ health screening recommendations a ‘bold step’
Mary Regina Boland of the Perelman School of Medicine says patients could lower their environmental health risks by discovering the source of their exposure to toxic chemicals.
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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.
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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.
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