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Relational Possibilities: A Remix of Aesthetic Forms Through Indigeneity and Blackness

We Waste Away

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1. Our Water Relations Remember How We Treat Them Across the U.S. the environmental movement began. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy signed the Delaware River Basin Compact, which created a commission between Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and Delaware to address river planning and regulations. [4] By 1964 cities like Philadelphia contributed the most wastewater from sewage treatment plants, blood from slaughterhouses, toxic waste from chemical companies like Dupont to the Delaware River. It’s estimated that about a million pounds of waste went into the river daily. Water tests for bacteria counts showed high levels of bacteria and zero dissolved oxygen (i.e. fish and plant life could not survive under these conditions). Caviar and sturgeon fish disappeared from the river. [6]
2. How To Colonize the Colonizers
3. It's Already Inside Us The Philadelphia Water Department begins to collect data and test for microplastics found in the city’s rivers and streams. [9] Microplastics are pieces of plastic less than 5mm long (i.e. tinier than rice!). Research does not know yet what long-term effects microplastics have on humans. [10] [11] [12] It is already inside us - from the water we drink, the clothes we wear, and the food we eat. [13] [14] Microplastics are in the state of Pennsylvania’s “cleanest waterways.” [15]
4. Drinking In the Philadelphia Skyline
5. YOU are on Native Land
6. Treating Our Relatives On Our Visit
7. We Waste Away
8. But Did You Pay For It? The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and the federal government’s Environmental Protection Agency brought enforcement actions against the City of Philadelphia for violations of the state Clean Streams law and federal Clean Water Act. [7] In response, the City of Philadelphia created Green City, Clean Waters, a 25 year plan to reduce stormwater volume through system repairs and green infrastructure projects (e.g. adding more plants, creating tree trenches on residential blocks to soak up stormwater). According to the City government, old sections of the sewer system in “about 60 percent of the city” overflow in wet weather polluting roads and waterways with stormwater and sewage flow. [6] [8]
9. Circling Back And Forth Down the River
10. Follow The Formations and Streams
11. Where Is the Water Safe? PennEnvironment reports that the city’s wastewater system still pours huge volumes of raw sewage and runoff pollution into the two rivers and local creeks for 128 days or more per year. Stormwater and sewage flow through the same pipes towards the same wastewater treatment plants. Several popular water recreation locations along the local rivers and creeks received more frequent than average combined sewer overflows (Bartram’s Garden, Cobbs Creek Park, Tacony Creek Park). [7]
12. Green?