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Schuylkill River Report

By Phoebe Barr

A story of land and resource theft, of environmental degradation, of communities sidelined. A story of resistance and hope and the possibility of radical change.

 
On dark, freezing mornings in February, eight girls and I used to carry a heavy shell down to the docks of 1 Boathouse Row on the Schuylkill River. On particularly bad days, we’d have to punch through a thin crust of ice around the dock with our gloved hands. We tried hard not to get the gloves wet. My teammates rubbed their cold feet as they took their positions in the boat, and as I prepared to steer us out into the black water, they joked with me that their tradition was to throw the coxswain into the river in celebration if they won a race.

The joke was that this was a nightmare scenario. No coxswain in her right mind would want any kind of direct contact with the Schuylkill. We cut over the water’s surface, but what lurked below—according to all legends: waste, chemicals, pollution, even dead bodies—was a horror we were all too glad the river’s murkiness didn’t allow us to see.

The Schuylkill River is a river of contradictions. It boasts a running and biking trail acclaimed for its natural beauty,1 and its tributaries run through celebrated protected parks;2 yet it has long been a site of industry, one where waste of coal plants and oil refineries have poisoned those that rely on it for drinking water.3 Its bed is known among Philadelphians as a site of impenetrable mystery, the river’s polluted murk sheltering dumped bodies and other cast-off crimes,4 but its sparkling surface hosts plenty of recreation activities, including the biggest high school rowing tournament in the world.5 Schuylkill is a word that no one but a Philadelphian can pronounce by seeing it or spell by hearing it pronounced. It was also a name given to the river by colonizers. The story of the Schuylkill is a story of land theft and resource theft, of environmental degradation and neglect, of communities constantly sidelined and ignored. However, it is also a story of resistance and hope. It is a story that holds the promise, or at least the possibility, of radical change.

Pennsylvania is the ancestral land of the Lenape people. Lenapehoking, it is called, and it encompasses parts of Delaware, New Jersey, and New York as well as Pennsylvania.6 The Lenape are believed to have settled there more than 2,000 years before Europeans arrived on America’s shores.7 For 2,000 years, generation after generation, the river belonged to them; they called it Ganshowahanna, “falling water,” or Manayunk, “where we drink.”8 The name Schuylkill came from Arendt Corssen, a single Dutch navigator9 who, traveling far from home, decided to lay claim to the water and give it a Dutch name. The name means “hidden creek.”10 Its renaming would only be the beginning of dispossessing the Lenape of their water and land.

Soon the Schuylkill River would be put to a new use, one that undercut its traditional role as a drinking-place. The Schuylkill River would become a river of industry.

William Penn received the land that would become Pennsylvania from King Charles II in 1681.11 He did his best to deal fairly with the Lenape, and his vision for the City of Brotherly Love was a progressive one: he created a “Charter of Liberties” which ensured democratic elections and freedom of religion,12 a distant precursor to the more famous Bill of Rights which would come out of the same city. Despite Penn’s honest principles, however, the tide of colonialism was against honesty and fair dealing with Indigenous people. His sons produced fake treaties and defrauded the Lenape out of 1.2 million acres of land in what is today known as the Walking Purchase of 1737.13 The Lenape were forced away from the river, away from “where they drank,” and over subsequent decades they would be pushed farther and farther away, so that now Lenape descendants reside in western areas of the United States and even in Canada.14 This was a story that played out in dozens of places up and down the coast of the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries. European domination was remaking the land: new meanings of soil and water were emerging, meanings as property, ownable, sellable, exploitable. Soon the Schuylkill River would be put to a new use, one that undercut its traditional role as a drinking-place. The Schuylkill River would become a river of industry.

Coal production came first. The Schuylkill’s headwaters are in Schuylkill County, around 130 miles away from Philadelphia, where resides one of the largest coal deposits in the world.15 By 1814, coal mines were springing up all around Schuylkill County, and by 1913, anthracite extraction had reached the pitch of 80 million tons per year.16 The process of removing impurities from anthracite required huge amounts of water, which was blackened by the coal and then usually dumped back into the river.17 In 1898, pollution of the Schuylkill was already visible and killing vegetation.18 By 1945, sediment had clogged the river to the point where Philadelphia’s residents said it hardly resembled water. One writer told a macabre tale that a man tried to kill himself by jumping into the river, but found himself stuck halfway in the silt instead, making the “shocking discovery that there hadn’t been any river there when he had jumped.”19 Already, in the early 20th century, Philadelphians were telling a familiar joke about their wastewater river.

Things would only get worse. Oil refining came to the Schuylkill in 1870, when Atlantic Refining Co. opened a refinery at Point Breeze in South Philadelphia.20 In 1881, residents were already describing the strange transformations of the marshy land around the river. Smog darkened the sky above, and plants were dying in water that had turned slick and rainbow-colored.21 This was no hindrance to the burgeoning fossil fuel industry, however. Gulf Oil opened a neighboring refinery in 1926.22 Danger followed those who lived and worked around the river in the 20th century; four men working on a new Philadelphia sewer line were killed in a set of explosions in 1962, triggered by leaked oil.23 Their deaths were quick compared to the high numbers of people in neighboring communities who contracted cancer.24 In 1988 and 1994, Sunoco bought both refineries and transformed them into a single complex, the biggest on the East Coast.25 It partnered with the Carlyle Group in 2012 to create Philadelphia Energy Solutions,26 which was the operator of the refinery in 2019, when it was destroyed in a devastating series of explosions.27 While the explosions shut down the site and PES filed for bankruptcy, even today the site is still emitting cancer-causing benzene at concerning rates.28 This South Philadelphia stretch of the Schuylkill River has been so heavily impacted by environmental degradation that it is sometimes termed a “sacrifice zone.”29

The Schuylkill once bore the name of drinking water. Today, that idea is laughable to most. I don’t remember being taught the river’s history in school: I never directly learned about the industrial boom that brought black dust down from the headwaters, or about the hunger for fuel that sent iridescent, cancerous chemicals out from the marshes. Instead, the history of the Schuylkill’s degradation came to me through a city’s collective memory. It was simply common knowledge that the Schuylkill was poison. The fact seeped into my mind through a thousand barbed jokes: that if you fell into the river, you would come out with two heads, or that if the fish could talk, they would all sound like hard smokers, or that peeing in the river would actually help make the water cleaner. Because the river was too opaque for anyone to see the bottom, it was a common legend that the riverbed was littered with the bodies of murder victims. Who, after all, would notice a decomposing body under so many layers of silt and chemicals? When the Schuylkill was already the site of such crimes against nature, what difference would a crime against humanity make? Anything could be hidden in the hidden creek.

When I became a coxswain for my high school’s crew team, I started to hear these jokes every day. The Schuylkill River is known for its rowing tournaments; the Stotesbury Cup Regatta, which is now almost a century old, holds 31 championship events over the course of a weekend and is known as the largest high school regatta in the world.30 As one of the home teams for this national event, we were fiercely competitive and practiced incessantly all spring. While the temperature was still low enough to freeze the water around us, we were already rowing. Our team pride, however, did not extend to the river we practiced on. Notwithstanding the team’s “tradition” of throwing their coxswain into the water (which, never having won a single regatta, I never had to learn the sincerity of), I knew that keeping the team away from the water was my most important job. In three years, I never let a boat capsize. I kept our shell skimming over the surface, which was opaque black before sunrise, opaque gray under the white clouds of February days. I endeavored to allow the team not to think about the Schuylkill’s depths at all. We separated ourselves from it in our minds; below us was a history of death and degradation, but we were athletes, young, healthy, our eyes on a championship, enjoying ourselves as much as the cold allowed.

Crewing teams on the Schuylkill River.
A crew team practices along the Schuylkill River at Boathouse Row near Center City Philadelphia at sunrise.
Photo by JWCohen, courtesy Shutterstock.

I wonder how much social class entered into this paradigm. My high school was not in Philadelphia, but just outside it, on the wealthy, suburban Main Line. I was one of the few members of the crew team who actually lived in Philadelphia, a short bike ride away from this malevolent river. Many of my peers lived on grand, green estates, where they grew up playing in their own sparklingly clear swimming pools. They would have no other occasion to see the river than when the bus drove them down to Boathouse Row for practice. Perhaps, to them, the Schuylkill River embodied everything frightening about the city: industry, pollution, crime. Perhaps they even associated the dirty water with the poverty of those who could not afford houses in suburbia. Of course, despite being a Philadelphia resident, I was not innocent of this way of thinking myself. Why were any of us so ready to believe that the people who lived around the Schuylkill were committing so many undocumented murders?

Ultimately, we all wanted to forget about the river. We believed that it was indeed a sacrifice zone, one of many casualties of exploitative industry throughout the nation and the world. In a way, we had accepted it. The jokes about raspy fish and dead bodies were simply part of what it meant to know the river. My crew team and I all lived far enough away that we didn’t fear the Schuylkill’s pollution touching our homes, and so we wanted to turn away from it, dismissing it as a lost cause. Those who lived in the shadow of the oil refineries were mainly low-income communities of color.31 They were the ones who bore the brunt of the fossil fuel industry’s pollution, as is the case with so many other instances of environmental degradation.32 Their health and wellbeing was part of the “sacrifice.” In many ways, the story of the Schuylkill River felt like a tragedy.

There is good news, however, for Philadelphia and for coxswains everywhere. The river is not nearly as lost as many in the city think.

The 20th century saw fierce battles for regulatory laws against pollution of the Schuylkill. Major coal companies lobbied against regulation, but they met stiff opposition from communities that still relied on the Schuylkill for drinking water, as well as those who used it for recreation.33 Laws to ensure clean water trickled into the books one by one: the Purity of Water Act in 1905,34 the Clean Stream Law in 1937,35 the Schuylkill River Desilting Act in 1945.36 Federal and state governments came together in the wake of the Desilting Act for a joint project to clean up the Schuylkill from its decades of coal pollution.37 More than 16.5 million cubic yards of sediment were removed from the river,38 and 47 collieries were ordered by the Sanitary Water Board to stop sending waste from coal mines into the Schuylkill.39 This was only the beginning of removing coal pollution from the river, but with more governmental assistance, by the 1990s Congress was celebrating the Schuylkill’s transformation;40 the Schuylkill Heritage Area was created, with Congressional funding for upkeep of the Schuylkill’s beautiful walking and biking trails.41 I walk these trails today when I’m home from school. They’re beautiful when their flowers start to bloom in the spring, when squirrels and chipmunks start to emerge after the frost recedes. These pieces of nature have been preserved because of those who fought for the river.

Despite Philadelphia’s generations-old knowledge of the Schuylkill’s pollution, despite a lifetime of jokes and stories that have told us it is something to keep away from, students and activists are still hoping for a better river.

Far less attention has come to the pollution that came from oil refineries,42 but changes have been made since the PES explosions in 2019. The refinery filed for bankruptcy and completely shut down, and benzene emissions, though still concerningly high, have dropped.43 The site’s new owners do not plan to continue refining in the area.44 At the moment, the future of the old marsh is unclear, but the possibility exists for a new, transformative treatment of the land and water.

It may be, indeed, that old industries are passing away. Public opinion is turning against fossil fuels: since before the PES explosion in 2019, academic institutions have been divesting from the industry in the face of heavy pressure from activists.45 People are beginning to dream of a world where fossil fuel extraction is a thing of the past. Projects have sprung up around the Schuylkill River such as Futures Beyond Refining, which is drawing attention to the pollution from the old PES refinery and encouraging local communities to imagine a different future for the river.46 One part of the project has been soliciting short fiction from middle-school students, who are asked to imagine the Schuylkill River in 2100.47 While some offer portents of environmental devastation on par with the worst of 20th-century coal pollution, others take a more hopeful view, imagining that in a hundred years the memory of oil refining will have been washed away, and that the land and water will be restored so that children can swim there again.48 One submission urged elected officials, when picturing the future, to “be brave” in confronting the needs of the water.49 Despite Philadelphia’s generations-old knowledge of the Schuylkill’s pollution, despite a lifetime of jokes and stories that have told us it is something to keep away from, students and activists are still hoping for a better river. I am still hoping, too. I want to believe the river can be a place for drinking again.

This land is Lenapehoking. This water was stolen from the Lenape by William Penn’s family; I don’t know how we can rectify that old, original crime that lies hidden in the riverbed. Possibly one day the Lenape will be able to reclaim it. That would require a longer battle, but this river has won battles before. One thing I remember is this: a certain Lenape story says that the whole Earth is built on top of a turtle’s back.50 In late April, when the cold wind finally started to fade from our early-morning crew practices, and when we’d start to see the sun rise over the river, I remember my teammates eagerly pointing out turtles on the bank. We saw more and more of them as spring progressed toward summer, sometimes seven or eight at a time. The dawn light would hit their patterned shells as a turtle would jump into the water. It would swim back and forth languidly, and a rower, already sweating from the hard exercise, would joke that she was almost tempted to follow.

There are still turtles in the river, swimming and drinking and living and laying eggs. The Schuylkill has not been polluted to death. People are still fighting for the river; new research is being conducted, new campaigns are forming, new movements are pushing for new laws to protect the water. Those of us who know the river will always continue hoping for its restoration. My hope grows every time I see a turtle swimming in the Schuylkill on a warm, sunny day. Maybe, I think, the old story will come true again—maybe the world will be rebuilt on their resilient shells.
 

Learn more about Philadelphia’s progressive plan for stormwater management in “Green City, Clean Waters,” a Terrain.org Unsprawl case study by Deborah Fries.

  

End Notes
  1. “SCHUYLKILL RIVER TRAIL”
  2. “Wissahickon Valley Park”
  3. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 6; Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 660
  4. Frank Reynolds, “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia – Schuylkill River”
  5. “About the Stotesbury Cup Regatta”
  6. Joanne Barker, “Territory as Analytic,” p. 26
  7. “Before Colonization”
  8. Beth Kephart, Flow, p. 10
  9. Beth Kephart, Flow, p. 9
  10. Ibid.
  11. Joanne Barker, “Territory as Analytic,” p. 28
  12. Ibid.
  13. Ibid.
  14. Joanne Barker, “Territory as Analytic,” p. 26
  15. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 17
  16. Ibid.
  17. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 20-21
  18. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 21
  19. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 22
  20. Erica Brockmeier, “After the shutdown, what comes next for the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery?” and Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  21. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 663
  22. Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  23. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 665
  24. Ibid.
  25. Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  26. Ibid.
  27. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 661
  28. Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  29. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 660
  30. “About the Stotesbury Cup Regatta”
  31. Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  32. Ibid.
  33. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 28, 33
  34. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 30
  35. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 34
  36. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 37-38
  37. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 54
  38. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 66
  39. Chari Towne, A River Again, p. 70
  40. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 663
  41. Ibid.
  42. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 664
  43. Susan Phillips, “Cancer-causing benzene continues to flow from PES refinery complex.”
  44. Erica Brockmeier, “After the shutdown, what comes next for the former Philadelphia Energy Solutions refinery?”
  45. Jordan Wolman, “Harvard cracks on fossil fuels and a dam breaks.”
  46. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 672
  47. Bethany Wiggin, “RESTORING A RIVER, RE-STORYING HISTORY,” p. 661
  48. Ibid.
  49. Ibid.
  50. Joanne Barker, “Territory as Analytic,” p. 20

 

This is the fourth of 11 contributions to the Climate Stories in Action series, in partnership with the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University. The series runs from late May through early August 2024.

 

Phoebe BarrPhoebe Barr is a library worker, environmental organizer, and writer currently living in Boston, Massachusetts. She grew up in Philadelphia, where she first learned to love nature at the Wissahickon Valley Park. 

Header photo of crew teams on the Schuylkill River by Bryan Littel, courtesy Shutterstock.