A TASTE OF REVOLUTION was still in the air in 1798 when Philadelphia began creating the nation’s first municipal water system. But from the first plan on, racism polluted the taps.
The British architect charged with imagining the steam-powered pumps and public baths intended to keep the city hydrated and free of disease won over the city’s elite with an innovative proposal. He made no secret of whom the infrastructure would serve. It was a water system designed to cool the city’s European residents who “have not yet learned how to live healthy in a hot climate,” wrote architect Benjamin Latrobe.
White Europeans couldn’t take the heat, so it was time to modify the kitchen.
The system Philadelphia built operated on the premise that water was a property right, not a human right. The clean H₂O flowed only to those who could pay for it to be piped into their homes. Meanwhile, the plan guiding the city's development prioritized European colonial settlers who could buy land and build homes, but left few options for Black people to build their own. These families shared overstretched public pumps.
By 1899, when W.E.B. Du Bois published his landmark sociological text, The Philadelphia Negro, less than 14% of Black families surveyed had access to bathrooms, water closets, or private outhouses, according to his research. Even comfortable families shared water resources. “[I]ts water,” Du Bois wrote of Philadelphia, “is wretched.”
Racial disparity in water access persists. In Flint, Mich., a municipal water system poisoned residents. In Jackson, Miss., storm flooding crashed the city’s neglected water treatment facility, leaving residents without water for more than a month. Philadelphia’s water inequity is exacerbated by flooding and aging housing in lower-income communities, said Maurice Sampson, eastern Pennsylvania director for the nonprofit Clean Water Action.
When it rains hard, sewage pollutes local rivers because of the city’s antiquated treatment system. Because most Philadelphia neighborhoods have more pavement than green space, storm-water runoff also floods homes. Especially in underserved communities, flooding leads to wet basements, black mold, and respiratory illness. “I haven’t found a single household without asthma, without black mold issues,” Sampson said.
The solution, according to Sampson, is greener infrastructure for all with storm-water infrastructure prioritized in low-lying and historically disinvested neighborhoods like Haddington, Kingsessing, and Tioga.
Neighbors would see more gardens crop up adjacent to city sidewalks, where grasses and trees would absorb storm-water runoff and slow its flow into rivers.