Here’s a close up view of how Philadelphia street litter is polluting our creeks and rivers. (link)
You can see my other TTF photosynths here.
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Tag Archives: Philadelphia litter
Philadelphia’s 1995 Litter – Creek Trash Mistaken Impression and Today’s Street Litter
Philadelphia, as part of Appendix C of the PaDEP-Philadelphia 6/1/11 Consent Order and Agreement (COA), is required to continue implementing EPA’s Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Nine Minimum Controls (NMC) (link), including NMC #7 Pollution Prevention Programs to Reduce Contaminants in CSOs.
EPA’s 1995 CSO NMC Guidance document (Chapter 8) outlines 10 nonstructural options that EPA encouraged CSO cities to consider in addressing solids and floatables pollution prevention. These 10 NMC #7 techniques are:
- Street Cleaning (more frequent in high litter areas)
- Public Education Programs
- Solid Waste Collection and Recycling (including trash receptacles, more frequent pick-ups in litter problem areas)
- Product Ban/ Substitution (fast food packaging)
- Control of Product Use
- Illegal Dumping
- Bulk Refuse Disposal
- Hazardous Waste Collection
- Water Conservation
- Commercial/ Industrial Pollution Prevention
PHL Code 10700- Refuse and Littering
Here’s where you can see Philadelphia’s refuse and litter code (link).
Philadelphia’s Code Violation Notice Data
As part of the recent Philly EcoCamp, the Streets Department released a series of data files, including data on Code Violation Notices (CVN) that will be helpful to anyone interested in Philadelphia’s litter – fugitive trash problem. The CVN file includes these 17 data items:
- FID
- Ticket_Num
- Property_B
- Violation_
- Violation1 violation code
- Violatio_1 text description of violation
- Fine_Amoun
- Warning
- Voided
- Date_Added
- Issued
- Comments
- Evidence_F
- L_HUNDRED
- R_HUNDRED
- SEG_ID
- STNAME
Interested users can map and analyze the 434,370 records in this July 2009 to June 18,2014 data file to see where the City has issued code violation notices. The City uses over 100 codes to record these violations for litter, trash, recycling and dumpster violations.
As a very simple example of what can be done with this data, I’ve made a simple summary table of the top 5 violations give a sense of in the 7/09 – 6/14 period:
The City has issued nearly 62,000 ‘sidewalk not litter free” notices as well as nearly 52,000 “premises not litter free” for a total of 113,621 litter CVN in this nearly 5 year period. The City has certainly been busy.
In the next blog I’ll map where these CVN has been issued.
Philadelphia’s Vacant Lot Clean Up Program
Here is a very well done 311 TV video interview with Philadelphia’s Tom Conway explaining the City’s vacant lot clean up program.
Click the image to see the 3 minute video. (Link)
Philadelphia Streets Dept’s Philly EcoCamp Data
As part of Philly Ecocamp the Philadelphia Streets Dept. (PSD) has released several data files that will help citizen activists research and better understand Philadelphia’s fugitive trash problem.
Congratulations to the Nutter Administration, Commissioner Perri, Tim Wisniewski and the Streets Department for taking this important step in opening up City litter/trash data to the public. Continue reading
Solving Philadelphia’s Fugitive Trash Problem
Philadelphia has a serious street litter- dumping – creek trash problem that must be addressed. Philadelphia plastic bags and bottles are being carried by stormwater runoff to our local creeks, the Delaware River – Bay and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean.
Fugitive Trash
We expect our trash to be properly handled, so we can label improperly handled trash as “fugitive trash” because it is trash that escaped our proper trash handling system. We have 3 main sources of fugitive trash:
- Pedestrian and Vehicular Litter
- Dumping of Commercial – Construction Debris
- Dumping of Residential Trash
Much of this improperly handled trash gets carried to our creeks-rivers-Bay-Ocean by stormwater, seriously degrading our water resources.
Stormwater Runoff Continue reading
Philadelphia’s Plastic Bottles Trashing Tacony – Frankford Creek
Plastic bottles are a serious water pollution problem in Philadelphia. This photo survey shows the accumulation of plastic bottles in the Tacony – Frankford Creek and Tacony Creek Park.
(Click any image to launch slide show. Press X in Upper left to return to post)
You can download a pdf file of slides here.
Trash Photo Tour of Tacony – Frankford Creek
This map shows the extent of my 4/1/14 photo trash tour of the Tacony – Frankford Creek from E Wyoming Ave to Castor Ave.
View the slide show by clicking on any image.
To view the tour as a pdf, click this link.
Mapping Philadelphia Litter
The Philadelphia Streets Department (PSD) conducts street litter surveys several times each year. They use a Street Litter Index to assign as score (1 – minimal, 4 significantly littered) to rate small multi-block survey areas.
Here are side-by-side maps of PSD’s 2007-08 and 2012 surveys:
(Click to enlarge)
You can compare these 2 maps in a before-after fashion by clicking this image and moving the Vertical slider: (Click to see interactive version)
Notice the differences between 2007-2008 and 2012? Any ideas why 2012 looks like there is less litter?
Here is a short Word file on the Street Department’s Litter Index ( psd_street_litter_index)
Posted in GIS, Phila Trash
Tagged Green City Clean Waters, Philadelphia litter, Philadelphia storm water, TTF Watershed