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The Recent Rain Storms Turned the Schuylkill River into a Floating Garbage Dump
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We all know that the polar ice caps are melting and that planet Earth as we know it is probably on a fast track to an early destruction due to carbon emissions. We don’t live particularly close to the polar ice caps here, so it’s fairly easy to ignore all that.
But when the Schuylkill River looks like this, as it did today, well…yikes:
VIDEO: Basketball, balloons and bottles are just some of the debris we found in the Schuylkill River near Boathouse Row. A ton of trash is flowing down the river and gathering here after heavy rainfall the last couple of days. @6abc pic.twitter.com/qCP4p9FoCm
— Jeannette Reyes (@msnewslady) August 14, 2018
Technically, we aren’t really to blame for this. The Schuylkill flows south from parts of the state that we don’t generally think about too often.
Thing is, though, when they get deluged in places like Columbia County:
Fishing Creek in Benton, Columbia County is out of its banks and approaching disaster levels here. @wnep @NWSBinghamton #pawx pic.twitter.com/ddp93mpjF9
— Michael Erat (@MichaelErat) August 13, 2018
and Schuylkill County:
Intersection of Progress Avenue and Norwegian Street in Pottsville looks like an overflowed creek @WNEP @WNEPWeather pic.twitter.com/qLY2nR6HnJ
— Chase Senior (@Chase_Senior) August 13, 2018
…the water that falls starts there and flows straight down to us. Along the way, it picks up all sorts of unpleasant detritus and waste. And the next thing you know, Boathouse Row looks like a stand-in for Calcutta.
This being Philadelphia, though, you can be sure that the national media will make this out to be our fault. “Those dirty Philadelphians, they can’t even take care of their own natural resources.”
So let me be the first to tell you, my fellow citizens:
Formerly a Featured Columnist on the Philadelphia Phillies and Manchester City Football Club for Bleacher Report. Full-time attorney, part-time pundit. Follow me @philkeidel on Twitter.