Delaware Riverkeepers looking for summer pollution monitors
The Delaware Riverkeeper Network and Riverways Coalition are seeking enthusiastic individuals that are interested in adopting a section of a creek, stream, or river in the Philadelphia region for weekly monitoring. Volunteers will conduct visual assessments of Combined Sewer Overflow outfalls at their assigned sections.
If you look along a streambank and see a large pipe or something that looks like a concrete tunnel, you are likely looking at an outfall for a combined sewer system. During periods of highwater, they can be hidden, but they are still discharging raw sewage, industrial wastewater, and pollutants from nearby roads and parking lots.
Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs) occur when combined sewer systems reach their capacity, resulting in untreated sewage and stormwater runoff to enter a nearby waterbody. Nearly every creek, stream, and river in the Philadelphia and Camden region are impacted by a combined sewer system. CSOs carry raw sewage, industrial wastewater, and pollutants from roads and parking lots. When this enters our waterways, it impairs water quality and presents health risks to those recreating in, and around, the area.
Annually, billions of gallons of raw sewage mixed with polluted stormwater flow through our neighborhoods, parks, and playgrounds, and discharge into Philadelphia waterways, like the Tacony/Frankford and Cobbs Creeks and the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers. While the sewer systems in Philadelphia and Camden are being updated, DRN believes the pace of this work must increase. Clean water is a basic right, but it has been taken from communities that bear the burden of CSOs.
Monitoring Details:
- The goal is to conduct a visual assessment of your assigned site once a week.
- It will be important to monitor on both rainy and sunny days.
- Monitoring will run through the summer.
- Monitors will be paired in groups of two (required for safety reasons).
- We will have a monitor training session to walk you through your CSO location, discuss monitoring safety, go over the data you will be collecting, and show you how to submit your data.
- A phone with a camera is required for this project.
Ready to become a monitor for a cleaner and healthier environment?
Please fill out this interest form and our CSO project team will be in touch!
Questions? Please contact Julia Palmer at science@delawareriverkeeper.org
