■
From ground to mouth: foraging persimmons p. 4
■ Saving generational knowledge of textiles p. 12
■ City legislation takes on trash incineration p. 18
HANDS-ON HABITAT
A rebuilt environmental center is reconnecting West Philly to its wild backyard
Danielle Darfour, Cobbs Creek Community Education Center volunteer
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Kyle Bagenstose
Deesarine Ballayan
Bernard Brown
Constance Garcia-Barrio
Emily Kovach
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The IRL Issue
Acouple of weeks ag o, i visited the Comcast Technology Center. It was my first time inside that gleaming skyscraper, designed to knock your socks off with escalators rising above “Exploding Paradigms,” a sculpture of mirrored triangles that the company describes as “a steel vortex heading into the sky.” Just past the top of the escalators, I stepped inside the 39-foot white Universal Sphere. It looks like a UFO, but it’s actually a 360-degree theater in which Peter Coyote narrates a montage of inspiring video clips with a theme of how much can be achieved by working together.
That sounds like a nice message, though I can’t help but be suspicious of a corporate messenger whose business model relies on people staying on their butts with their eyes glued to screens. I also take issue with the emphasis on achievement, which reduces togetherness to a means rather than an end in itself.
I’d rather focus on the togetherness. When I read Marilyn Anthony’s piece about Sharon Lee’s dumpling parties, I wanted to have a dumpling party too. It’s not because I particularly love dumplings (though I do), but because spending a few hours making and eating food with friends is a blast. I figure any food that is fun to assemble and quick to cook will work. How about mini pizzas and cookies? The dumplings, or any other food you cook, aren’t the achievement. They’re the ingredient that brings friends together.
Looking through this issue of Grid, I was struck by how many articles are about doing things in the real world, whether directly or indirectly. We have articles about an environmental center in a city park, about how
a middle school teacher gets her classes out into nature (in West Philadelphia). We also have stories about how we can keep real world experiences sustainable and accessible, whether that involves solar panels on zoo buildings or theater companies cutting waste by sharing props and sets.
Grid has always strived to balance coverage of people living fulfilling, sustainable lives with stories of high-level policy. We need to understand and fight global warming, and to keep the pressure on our government to stop exacerbating environmental injustice, which it does when it sends waste to be burned in Chester.
We also try to avoid the trap of saying what we’re doing wrong (driving too much, eating rainforest beef, buying fast fashion) without celebrating the richness and joy of what we can do that’s right.
I am fully aware that reading a magazine is generally a quiet, solo experience, but we hope that when you finish reading, you visit the zoo, go see a show and have some friends over to make dumplings.
bernard brown , Managing Editor
“Not Good Until They Be Rotten”
Experience the joy of foraging persimmons
On my way out of the Cobbs Creek Environmental Education Center in October, I stopped to pick through the leaves around the American persimmon trees at the top of the driveway. It was a little early in the season, with plenty of fruit still on the tree, but I found a few little blobs of luscious orange goo to eat. A ripe persimmon looks rotten by any other fruit’s standards, a ball of mush thinly contained by a weak skin. The force of hitting the ground usually breaks that skin, so that you could be fooled into thinking someone stepped on the fruit — and why would
by bernard brown
you want to eat something that looks rotten and stepped on?
Because it’s delicious, that’s why. And because if you eat it any earlier, it will be miserably astringent, its tannins coating the inside of your mouth with an unpleasant, scowl-inducing film. An early English colonist in Virginia wrote that the fruit are “not good until they be rotten.”
Persimmon trees have a distinctive blocky texture to their bark, and in late autumn, after they lose their leaves, they will still have some of the golf ball-sized fruit clinging to the twigs. When I find a tree, I’ll
walk carefully around to find the fruit on the ground. Sometimes I’ll give a branch a shake to knock loose any that were about to fall anyway (any you have to manually pick from the tree will be underripe), but I particularly target the ones that look like they have freshly fallen on a dead leaf. If the ground side of the fruit looks a little dirty, I work from the top and suck out the pulp, a candy-sweet pudding tasting of cinnamon and cantaloupe.
You can buy farmed persimmons, an East Asian species now grown in California, usually at markets serving East Asian immigrant communities, and they sometimes pop up at Trader Joe’s or other mainstream chains. The fuyu variety you see most often looks like a flat, orange tomato. The hachiya variety is shaped like a heart (the internal organ, not the symbol) and, like the wild species, is unpalatable right up until it is mushy and perfect.
The ones I picked off the ground in Cobbs Creek were from the locally native species, Diospyros virginiana , though they were planted intentionally. I have gathered these in the wild — in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, for example — but these days I forage them from trees in Fairmount Park.
“Foraging” implies the harvest of wild foods, but is that what I’m doing when I’m stuffing my face with persimmons from trees planted by Parks & Recreation? I wouldn’t say that about apple picking — a version of gathering fruit from cultivated, domesticated trees that is squarely “harvesting.”
In this case, though, I’m eating a relatively undomesticated native species. Humans here have been eating persimmons (the word itself is of Powhatan origin) for thousands of years. These persimmons aren’t only enjoyed by humans. One time, I rounded a tree, picking up fallen fruit until I got to a fresh clump of deer poop, evidence of another critter foraging.
Ultimately this is a question about how we cultivate the wild. If a park system plants trees for all the usual ecosystem services (providing habitat, slowing runoff, providing food for wildlife), maybe we can enjoy the landscape they create as if it were natural.
PHOTO BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS
An American persimmon looks good on the tree, but wait until it falls to eat it.
Wild About Solar
Elmwood Park Zoo’s newest building runs on solar energy
by jenny roberts
For the e lmwood park z oo , conservation doesn’t just mean protecting wild animals, like the giraffes, jaguars and monkeys that live at the Norristown facility, but also the planet they inhabit.
“We are not just species survival-based, we are also environmental survival-based, so we want to make sure we’re taking care of the planet as best we can and in any way that we can,” says Eric Donovan, the zoo’s chief operating officer.
That commitment is built into the zoo’s new Welcome Center and Frank & Paige Engro Veterinary Health Center — a shared, solar-powered facility completed in summer 2024.
The building has 449 solar panels across two segmented roofs. The project was supported through PECO’s solar rebate programs, which provided the zoo with more than $40,000 in incentives for the project.
Residential customers can receive $500 rebates through these programs, while businesses earn 10 cents per kilowatt-hour in incentives. The zoo’s solar panel system is estimated to generate over 350,000 kWh of energy savings annually — at current com-
mercial billing rates, that’s over $30,000 of savings and equivalent to the carbon captured by 215 acres of U.S. forests in a year.
“It was important for us to have some very sustainable practices within the implementation of the building that made sense from a cost perspective but also from a daily operational perspective too,” Donovan says.
The solar panels aren’t the only environmentally friendly initiatives at the welcome and health centers. The building also has bird-safe glass etched with stripes to prevent window collisions. The welcome and health centers recycle rainwater too — it’s used to irrigate outdoor plants and flush the building’s toilets.
The solar panels serve as a visible representation of the zoo’s commitment to sus-
The new solar array at the Elmwood
Zoo helps save on electricity bills and advances its conservation mission.
tainability — one that sparks interest among visitors. “A lot of people just find it really cool-looking,” says Donovan, adding that it offers visitors inspiration for a way they could choose to be sustainable too.
During the daytime when the sun is up, the solar panels are powering most of the welcome and health centers’ needs, but some electricity still needs to be drawn from PECO’s grid for equipment such as air conditioning units or MRI machines. At night, the building is still connected to PECO’s grid and able to pull electricity from it.
In August, the zoo held a Solar Safari event in collaboration with Solar States, the Philadelphia-based solar installer that worked on the zoo’s project. The event educated the public on the solar energy system, inverters and electrical infrastructure at the zoo.
Jared Pashko, Solar States’ director of sales and marketing, says solar panel systems like the zoo’s generally have warranties of 25 to 30 years, and some systems can last more than 50 years.
Donovan says the solar system at the welcome and health centers “made a lot of sense” for the zoo because it’s low maintenance and an accessible way to be sustainable. “We’re really happy with it,” he says. ◆
We are not just species survival-based, we are also environmental survival-based.”
eric donovan, Elmwood Park Zoo
Park
CITY . PLANET .
Clean Water, Clear Stories
Community garden volunteers learn to make water purifiers from plastic bottles by deesarine
ballayan
On saturday, oct. 26, North Philly-based artist and children’s books author Alyssa ReynosoMorris hosted a DIY water purification event at North Philly Peace Park. This was the final event of a threepart series called Stories Grow Here, funded by the Barnes Foundation.
The series is a part of Barnes North’s Everyday Places Artists Partnerships, which places a local artist in a community space that is related to the artist’s background and current work. Through reading and craft activities, Stories Grow Here combined art with an exploration of the natural world.
“People think that art can only happen inside of museums,” said Carolina Marin Hernandez, bilingual senior programs coordinator at the Barnes Foundation, who also leads Barnes North, a program designed to support and uplift local artists in North Philly. This new initiative is modeled after
Barnes West, which had a similar mission.
Most of the participants were parents and children who volunteer at North Philly Peace Park, a community garden where autonomy and knowledge of the Earth is prioritized
“I want [the kids] to be introduced to water because it’s from the earth,” said Illz Willz, parent volunteer and poet. “But also because we take water for granted.”
For the exercise, some of the older children were given clean bottled water and tasked with adding dirt to the bottles.
Once enough dirty water had been collected for the entire group, all participants walked around the park, watering plants with the water from their bottles to make space for the filters’ ingredients. To make the filters themselves, each participant then cut an empty water bottle in half.
“Peace Park is about community empowerment and I can’t think of anything more
empowering than cleaning your own water,” said Reynoso-Morris.
Before becoming a children’s book author, Reynoso-Morris spent much of her time in her home country, the Dominican Republic, purifying water in impoverished communities. She often worked in a similar capacity but on a larger scale, working with community members and engineers to improve access to clean water.
At Peace Park, Reynoso-Morris led the participants in flipping the tops of their cut water bottles upside down and into their bases for the drip process. They then stuffed the tops, layering materials — cleansing rocks, sand, charcoal and cotton balls — in order, creating increasing levels of filtration. Finally, participants poured the dirty water through their handmade filters and watched it drip into the bottom halves of the water bottles. Reynoso-Morris told them to filter out the water several times until it was clear.
At the end of the event, participants received a copy of Reynoso-Morris’ book “Bold, Brilliant, and Latine,” which highlights the lives and accomplishments of prominent Latine and Hispanic people from the past and present. The book also features examples of Latine heroes in environmental stewardship. Participants were also encouraged to take the leftover supplies and replicate their DIY water purification systems at home. ◆
Alyssa Reynoso-Morris demonstrates how to filter water at the North Philly Peace Park.
Dumpling Party
A University of Pennsylvania researcher’s Chinese New Year tradition features make-your-own dumplings story by
Even the most talented chefs began their food careers as eaters. Well before they were able to cook, they witnessed the magic of combining ingredients into delicious dishes, made for them by family, friends and other cooks. For some, need, desire — or even nostalgia — converts us from eaters to makers of the foods we love.
Sharon Lee’s childhood memories are about eating dumplings, not making them. Growing up in southern Taiwan, she and her family frequented a day market where they purchased fresh, uncooked dumplings. Lee remembers the dazzling speed and dexterity of the woman who filled and wrapped the savory treats. The family took their dumplings home to savor, enhanced with the simplest of soy-based sauces and a splash of vinegar.
In February 2021, as the pandemic isolation was receding and the Chinese New Year was approaching, a friend suggested that Lee might host a dumpling party. “Typically Chinese New Year doesn’t easily fit into the American holiday calendar,” Lee says, “but I still like to celebrate it. Inviting friends over to make dumplings seemed like a low-pressure, fun way to bring a small group together.” That first casual dumpling dinner party launched a tradition that Lee, a radiology researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, has continued to celebrate every February since.
Lee’s approach to hosting a DIY dumpling party sounds invitingly easy and involves far less work than orchestrating a sit-down dinner for ten. Her menu consists of three types of dumpling fillings, usually the traditional cabbage-and-pork combination she ate as a child, something with beef and a vegetarian option. She’ll have soy,
marilyn anthony
Making dumplings brings friends together.
ginger, rice wine vinegar and minced garlic on hand to mix into sauces. Lee makes the fillings herself in advance and saves time by purchasing the wrappers from an Asian market. She sets out an array of snacks and beverages before guests arrive, then arranges the dumpling fixings on the large kitchen island in her Francisville townhouse.
While guests help themselves to drinks and snacks, Lee plays a YouTube video demonstrating methods for folding and pinching dumplings. Next, everyone gathers around the island and gets busy making
PORK AND CABBAGE DUMPLINGS
Yields about 50–60 dumplings. Extra filling can be made into meatballs or frozen.
1 pounds ground pork
1 ½ pounds green cabbage, finely shredded
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon minced garlic
Inviting friends over to make dumplings seemed like a low-pressure, fun way to bring a small group together.”
sharon lee
dumplings. Laughter and camaraderie are by-products as people “invent” new ways to shape dumplings. “They let their creativity out,” Lee says. Meanwhile, she begins cooking the dumplings in batches, laying them out on platters. As the makers keep making, they also dine on their finished products.
Prepping the fillings takes Lee one or two hours of chopping and mixing. The party usually unfolds over two to three fragrant, fun hours. Lee’s ideal guest list consists of people who “like to play with their food and are open to experimenting.” Each year she has some repeat attendees, but first-timers are welcome. “There’s something about food, that whether you’re making it or eating it, it brings people together,” Lee says. “I think my family in Taiwan would find it funny that I am hosting these parties because I was never the dumpling maker, but always an enthusiastic dumpling eater.” ◆
1 to 2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 packages of dumpling wrappers
2 to 4 tablespoons flour
• In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients (except the wrappers and flour). Keep stirring until the mixture is a bit sticky.
• Lay out the dumpling wrappers on a chilled sheet pan dusted lightly with flour.
• Place about 1 tablespoon of filling in the center of each wrapper.
• Fold dough over to enclose filling and pinch or press wrapper closed. (Lee recommends the YouTube video “16 Ways to Wrap a Dumpling”.)
• Chill raw dumplings on a sheet pan for 5 to 10 minutes.
• To Boil: Bring a large pot of water to a boil. Add about 10 dumplings at a time. Once the water begins to boil again, add a cup of cold water. Repeat this process two times. The floating dumplings can now be removed with a wire basket or slotted spoon. Serve at once with your choice of dipping sauce.
• To Pan Fry: Generously coat the bottom of a large flat pan with vegetable oil and heat until the oil shimmers. Carefully lay dumplings flat side down into the pan, being careful not to crowd them. When the bottoms are slightly golden brown and crisp, add about ¼ cup of water to the pan and cover immediately to steam and finish cooking the dumplings. Repeat in batches and serve immediately with your choice of dipping sauce.
Sharon Lee (second from right) enjoys the dumplings she has made with friends.
Stitching Loose Threads
Pennsylvania Fibershed facilitates connections across the state’s growing textiles supply chain by emily kovach
At the turn of the 20th century, Philadelphia was one of the largest textile manufacturing cities in the country. Since the 1950s, the region’s ongoing deindustrialization has led to a sharp decline in textile mills, as well as in the number of farmers and artisans supporting the textile industry. Knowledge of how the industry operates has also faded.
Leslie Davidson and Rachel Higgins, co-founders of Pennsylvania Fibershed, are part of an ongoing effort to re-weave some of those threads.
“We’re losing this generational knowledge as the last generation of people are dying or selling their mills or businesses, and this is the last opportunity to pass along this knowledge to the younger generation,”
says Davidson. “We also need a lot of innovation in this industry to make it more of a circular economy.”
Pennsylvania Fibershed was once wrapped into a coalition-based nonprofit, All Together Now PA, which was founded in 2021 by White Dog Cafe founder and locavorism doyenne Judy Wicks. The organization worked to unite Pennsylvania’s rural and urban communities and advocate for local artisan economies, including food, building materials, plant medicine and clothing and textiles. After Wicks’ retirement in 2023, Higgins, the clothing coalition leader, and Davidson, director of operations, rebranded as Pennsylvania Fibershed, part of Fibershed, an international movement with close to 80 affiliates.
From there, they focused on education.
“We kept hearing that consumers need
to learn why it’s important to support local, use and wear natural fibers and buy secondhand,” Davidson says. “There’s also a need for education for producers, manufacturers and students.”
Davidson and Higgins started by establishing student ambassador programs at Thomas Jefferson University and at Higgins’ alma mater, Drexel University.
“We have cohorts of six students from each university educating their peers about fast fashion, overconsumption and supporting local,” Higgins says.
“We both went to school for fashion design and didn’t learn where our fiber came from; we’d just go somewhere and get the fabric,” Davidson says. “No one taught us about the effects of the textile industry on the climate, or how resource-intensive and depleting it is.”
Pennsylvania Fibershed is in the process of developing an online course geared toward both consumers and industry professionals. They also organize tours of manufacturing facilities and host events geared toward producers. A recent gathering, Fleece to Fabric, brought together producers, a shearer and representatives from a yarn mill and a knitting mill.
“Sheep farmers got to understand what happens to their wool after they’re done with it, as well as what condition it needs to be in, how to best prep their fibers and what are the markets they can sell it in,” notes Davidson. “We build bridges with people from all along the value chain.”
Building connections within the industry is at the heart of Pennsylvania Fibershed’s mission. It offers memberships for farmers, manufacturers, spinners, weavers, dyers, hobbyists, students, advocates, designers and consumers. The member hub includes resources for grant and collaboration opportunities, and a sourcing map that allows anyone to identify local businesses, like yarn and wool mills, where fiber can be sourced directly.
“A lot of the fashion industry is secretive about the whole manufacturing side — the supply chain is completely disconnected and you’d be amazed how people don’t find each other,” says Higgins. “That’s the support we want to provide: If they don’t have the time and expertise, we can fill in that gap.”
Rachel Higgins (sleeveless black shirt) and Leslie Davidson (yellow shirt) greet attendees at the Pennsylvania Fibershed industry happy hour in August.
Easing off the Gas
Philadelphia Gas Works agrees to hold first ever community meetings over reducing emissions by
julia lowe
For the first time in the utility’s history, Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) has agreed to hold community engagement meetings to discuss decarbonization.
In a settlement agreement approved Oct. 9 by the Public Utility Commission (PUC), PGW agreed not only to a significantly lower rate hike than they initially proposed, but also to begin engaging in a modernization process, starting with two community meetings to discuss long-term greenhouse gas emission reductions. But activists who intervened in the ratemaking case say that time will tell whether that commitment will have any teeth.
Peter Furcht of POWER Interfaith says this settlement is a good first step towards transitioning the city-owned utility away from gas, but in terms of holding them accountable to continue that effort, “There’s still a lot to be done.”
POWER was one of seven groups, including Sierra Club Pennsylvania, Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania,
Clean Air Council, Vote Solar, PennEnvironment and the Pennsylvania Public Interest Research Group, that intervened in PGW’s base ratemaking case as a coalition called the Energy Justice Advocates (EJA). The coalition, alongside consumer protection groups and consumer advocates, opposed PGW’s original proposed rate hike of $105 million, which would have increased an average monthly bill from $92.60 to $104.61. The settlement instead increases PGW’s operating revenues by $62 million, bringing the average bill up to $98.70.
The agreement is the latest in a multiyear effort to push PGW to decarbonize. In 2021, the City and PGW released a diversification study recommending the utility expand to alternatives like providing networked geothermal energy. In 2022, PGW allocated $500,000 for a geothermal pilot study, but progress seemingly stalled for three years, until this spring when PGW announced a feasibility study for installing heating and cooling pumps at John F. McCloskey Elementary School.
As part of discovery in the ratemaking case, PGW had sought the internal communications of members of EJA — in July, a judge ruled PGW was not entitled to this information on First Amendment grounds. “The First Amendment ruling was a particularly important outcome from the case, because it sets a precedent that will help protect public interest groups in the future,” says Devin McDougall, EJA’s attorney for the case.
Perhaps the most important step forward for the coalition’s member groups was PGW’s agreement to hold two community engagement meetings. The settlement states that the meetings will be held virtually, and each will include a presentation from PGW and one to two hours of public comments. There’s no set date for either of the meetings yet — PGW has agreed to convene them within 12 months of the settlement approval.
But the settlement doesn’t require PGW to act on what’s said at the meetings. The agreement states that the utility “may incorporate feedback and comments from these meetings into its low carbon pathways evaluations and considerations, as practical and as determined by PGW.”
When asked for information about when the meetings might be scheduled, PGW spokesperson Dan Gross declined to comment. In its statement after the agreement’s approval by PUC, PGW called the public input on the ratemaking case “unprecedented” and said that the settlement agreement “aims to keep PGW customers at the forefront.”
As Flora Cardoni of PennEnvironment puts it, the settlement is “just one milestone in the long process of reforming PGW, and that is really a marathon and not a sprint.”
“Philadelphians face real environmental and health risks from PGW gas as well as unnecessary costs,” Cardoni says. “We shouldn’t be investing millions and millions and millions of dollars into an energy source that we know is fueling the climate crisis, polluting our air, hurting our health, and is declining in terms of popularity.”
Protesters call for affordable PGW rates and a sustainable path forward for the utility at a May 6 Pennsylvania Public Utilities Commission meeting.
Horse Power
The 8 Seconds Rodeo spotlights Black horsemanship by constance garcia-barrio
One warm october night at Temple University’s Liacouras Center, tall, tan rodeo athlete Au’Vion Horton burst out of a high wooden chute on the back of a one-ton bull. As the bull plunged, spun and kicked to throw off Horton, the hum of the crowd at the East Coast premiere of the 8 Seconds Rodeo surged to shrieks. Horton’s hard spill had a kind of irony. “Bull riding is dangerous, but it saved my life,” says Horton, 24, of Hope, Arkansas, whose rodeo career began at age 5 or 6 when he first competed in “mutton bustin’” — an
event in which children ride sheep for as long as possible. “In high school, I tried to get my mom to sign a paper so that I could compete in bull riding,” he says. “She said no, so I lied to my grandmom and said that I needed the paper signed for my grades.”
Bull riding pulled Horton out of depression after his girlfriend, who was on a date with him, was caught in crossfire and died in his arms. He had stopped attending school and working out at the gym, but resumed both when he began rodeoing again.
“Bull riding has taught me to handle myself,” Horton says. “Win, lose or draw, I get
up [off the ground] and bow to the crowd, smiling. And I always have a plan B,” says Horton, who attended the University of Arkansas at Monticello. He earned certifications in diesel mechanics, truck and trailer operations, and automotive engineering while studying there.
Like Horton, fellow 8 Seconds Rodeo competitor Jhanii “Jayy” Hardin has taken more than her share of risks. A lifelong rodeo competitor and champion at barrel racing — a timed event where a horse and rider race around three barrels — Hardin is also a stuntwoman. “I did stunts for ‘Harriet,’ ‘Game
of Thrones,’ ‘The Walking Dead’ and more,” Hardin says. “I do a lot of high falls and fight scenes. My favorite stunt is rolling off the back of a horse. I don’t believe in the word ‘can’t,’ because you’re capable of anything.”
One could only agree with Hardin after watching 10 kids and 24 adults compete in mutton bustin’, barrel racing, bull riding and bronco riding. Founded by photojournalist Ivan McClellan, the 8 Seconds Rodeo, whose name refers to the minimum qualifying time riders must stay on a bull, is an Afrocentric event. The show opened with a prayer from Rev. Dr. Alyn Waller, pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, followed by Enon’s choir singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem. The emcee sketched the role of Black cowboys in settling the West. At the show’s start, Erin Brown — a North Philly native, winning rodeo athlete and executive director of the Philadelphia Urban Riding Academy, which provides free riding lessons for children who can’t afford them — rode around the arena carrying the American flag.
America paints its mythic cowboys white, but many historians estimate that about 25% of cowboys were Black. Many of them were freedmen who headed West after the Civil War and made new lives on farms and ranches, and during the big cattle drives between the mid-1860s and the mid-1880s. Informal roping and riding contests among ranches morphed into Wild West shows and rodeos. A handful of Black horsemen and horse-
women became legends. Shotgun-toting Mary Fields, aka Black Mary, once enslaved in Tennessee, won a contract to drive a stagecoach for the U.S. Postal Service in Montana from 1895 to 1903. Bill Pickett, the son of freedmen, achieved fame as a cowboy, rodeo star and actor, and became the first Black cowboy inducted into Oklahoma’s National Cowboy Hall of Fame in 1971.
Like their forebears, many of today’s Black cowboys and cowgirls acquire their skills and grit on farms and ranches. “My uncle had land, and I grew up rodeoing
ed in 8 Seconds along with her daughter and granddaughter while her 2-year-old great-granddaughter watched. Rodeos offer fat prizes, but competing comes with costs, Carter notes. “There’s the expense of traveling 1,400 miles to Philadelphia, and I just paid $2,800 in vet bills,” she says, slender and spiffy in a snap-button shirt, cowboy hat and rhinestone-studded belt.
A recently retired registered nurse, Carter worked and competed for years with the Bill Pickett Invitational Rodeo, a national touring event founded in 1984 because Black people were often barred from competing in white-sponsored rodeos. In 2022, Carter played a key role in launching the Midwest Invitational Black Rodeo, which also showcases the contributions of African American equestrians.
Philly’s heritage of Black horsemanship got the spotlight in the 2020 film “Concrete Cowboy.” There have been Black-run stables throughout the city, particularly on Fletcher Street in Strawberry Mansion since the Civil War, says Courtney Berne, professor of geography and urban studies at Rutgers University–New Brunswick. That legacy endures through Ellis “El-Dog” Ferrell Jr., 86, founder of the Fletcher Street Urban Riding Club, who still teaches horsemanship to young riders today.
Bull riding is dangerous, but it saved my life.”
au ’ vion horton
every weekend from November to April,” says Tyler Torrey of Convoy, Ohio. “I started riding bulls when I was 18. I did it for seven years. Now I’m a pick-up man. I distract the bull and get it away from the [fallen] rider. One time, a rider’s spur got caught in my leg. I had to have 28 stitches.”
Among the athletes are some daredevil dynasties. Carolyn Carter, 67, of Oklahoma City, a champion barrel racer, compet-
The number of Philly’s Black-owned stables has plummeted in recent decades. Redlining often prevented stable owners from buying the land, Berne says. Other stables fell victim to what Berne calls “the slow violence of gentrification.” The disappearing stables mean a huge loss. “They help level the playing field in a city fraught with inequities, but that land use doesn’t make money for the city,” Berne says. “I’ve seen kids who are clearly dysregulated walk up to a horse, wrap their arms around its neck. You can watch the kid decompress, see the healing taking place. Every single Black stable is a place of reclamation, of healing, but you can’t give the city a receipt that says ‘This horse saved this kid’s life.’”
At the 8 Seconds Rodeo, the Liacouras Center became one such place of reclamation that put Black horsemanship front and center. It not only recalled a Philly tradition, but also gave spectators good old-fashioned thrills. “I love rodeoing, being around it,” says Torrey. “All that adrenaline. There’s nothing like it.”
Many of the pieces at
Second Act
Community database helps local theaters share used costume and prop inventory by jenny roberts
When local productions need a feather boa to add to a costume or a vintage phone to serve as a prop, they know just where to look: to their fellow theater colleagues.
The aptly named Resource Sharing
Committee brings the Greater Philadelphia theater community together to share their materials for productions. The committee’s website has a free shared inventory database, where theater companies can both upload their stock and search for costumes, props and other theater equipment to rent
or borrow from their peers.
The goal of the Resource Sharing Committee is “reducing financial and material waste” while building community, says Nathan Renner-Johnson, committee member and executive director of Philadelphia Scenic Works, a nonprofit theatrical scene shop.
Renner-Johnson is one of about 10 volunteers who meet weekly to run the Resource Sharing Committee, which formed five years ago during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The committee started out as a way for theater workers to band together during an
Nathan Renner-Johnson’s theatrical scene shop, Philadelphia Scenic Works, are available for theater companies to use and reuse via the Resource Sharing Committee.
PHOTOS BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS
uncertain time when resources were scarce and costs high. In the years since, group members continued to meet, bonding over their passion for sustainability and the arts.
Ann Garner, a committee member and managing director of InterAct Theatre Company, says the theater industry can be paradoxical — companies always need more money to do their work, but they also throw away a lot of stuff.
Renner-Johnson says the reason theater companies trash their scenery, costumes and props most often has to do with lack of
If we can find ways for sustainability to be the cheaper, more affordable option, that’s a win-win-win that people are going to pursue.”
nathan renner-johnson
storage space, time and money.
Because the cost of space in the city is expensive, many companies just don’t have the funds to rent storage units or warehouses, meaning they can’t keep everything from each production. Local shows usually only run for about three weeks.
It’s particularly hard to hold onto scenery because of its size and site-specific details, Renner-Johnson adds. Even revamping and reusing scenery can be a challenge.
“At the end of the day, it’s cheaper to buy a new piece of wood than it is to pay someone to take an old piece of wood and make it good again,” he says.
Garner says ordering items on Amazon is tempting because it saves time — theater companies can buy exactly what they need rather than searching thrift shops throughout the city and relying on luck to get a good find.
Similarly, Garner says it also takes “extra effort” to sift through the committee’s inventory database instead of directly ordering items online. But still, she urges the theater community to use the available resources and adopt a sustainability mindset.
“All the people on the committee are
really passionate about sustainability and trying to keep things out of the landfill,” Renner-Johnson adds.
He says the benefit of the shared inventory database is that it can save theater companies money, whether through cheap rental rates or the free option of borrowing.
“If we can find ways for sustainability to be the cheaper, more affordable option, that’s a win-win-win that people are going to pursue,” he says.
In addition to the inventory database, the committee also facilitates an email chain of local production staff, so they can inquire about items or offer up their own stock for shows.
The committee also holds events, like a textile swap in July, when people brought their unwanted costumes, clothing and fabric to exchange with one another — the leftovers went to thrift stores.
Additionally, the committee has a database of venues on its website and other resource lists to share local industry knowledge.
“The places we’ve had the most success are just about being connectors and about supporting other people who have ideas or initiatives,” Renner-Johnson says. ◆
Getting Burned
A proposed bill could force the City to re-examine its waste and recycling contracts by
In June 2026, Philadelphia’s current solid waste and recycling contracts are set to end, and a coalition of policymakers, industry professionals and advocates hope to use the contract expiration as a lever to fundamentally shift the City’s waste management practices toward circular approaches that include reuse, recycling, repair and composting — while addressing environmental justice issues.
Critics say that the City of Philadelphia has prioritized disposal over alternative waste management strategies such as reuse, recycling and composting for decades. As the City’s first recycling coordinator, Maurice Sampson, likes to say, “The motto of the Sanitation Department is ‘throw trash and look good.’”
Since the pandemic, Philly’s recycling rate has hovered around 12%, refusing to budge even with Mayor Parker’s establishment of an Office of Clean and Green, which purports to exist to tackle the city’s pervasive litter issue and catapult Philly to the “safest, cleanest and greenest big city in the nation.” Advocates like Shari Hersh of Trash Academy question how Philadelphia can be the greenest big city while diverting 12% of its waste and sending 40% to be burned at an incinerator just down the river in Chester, Delaware County.
“If Philadelphia is serious about becoming the cleanest and greenest big city in America, we must end incineration and ultimately landfilling too, and ensure that our sanitation contracts include robust waste diversion requirements,” Hersh said at a City Council hearing in November.
Burn, Baby, Burn No More
Incineration has long been part of Philadelphia’s waste disposal portfolio, and under the Kenney administration, the City even considered it part of its 2017 strategy to achieve zero waste by 2035. It claimed that because burned trash was turned into energy at the Reworld (formerly Covan-
samantha wittchen
ta) waste-to-energy facility in Chester, it counted toward the City’s zero-waste goal. Advocates allege that by burning its trash, whether for energy or not, the City of Philadelphia is perpetuating environmental racism in Chester while also contributing to health issues there and in surrounding cities like Philadelphia.
All of these issues caught the attention of Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who took over as chair of City Council’s Committee on the Environment in 2024 and began convening advocates and environmental practitioners to hear their perspectives. “I
wanted to ground myself in what the most current and pressing issues were for people,” says Gauthier. In both 2024 and 2025, ending the practice of incineration came up as a priority.
“It just doesn’t sit well with people that our city would be participating in environmental racism in Chester,” explains Gauthier. “For me, I took it on because my constituents also experience this kind of environmental racism. And as a city, we should be examining our waste practices and making them as sustainable as possible.”
With the solid waste contract ending in 2026, Gauthier decided that the time was right to introduce a bill that would fundamentally change how Philadelphia manages its waste. The Stop Trashing Our Air Act, introduced by Gauthier in September, would ban the City from incinerating any of its waste.
The bill has been met with mixed responses. Advocates from the Energy Justice Network, Delco Environmental Justice and Chester Residents Concerned with Quality Living (CRCQL) praised it, but the Parker administration has been conspicuously silent. Gauthier suspects that the administration isn’t thrilled about the bill. “They don’t like being told what to do about waste management,” she says.
Still, Gauthier points to some positive signs that the City may be willing to revisit its waste management practices. She was
able to get Office of Clean and Green director Carlton Williams to say his office would take a look at this issue on record during the budget hearings in April. Her office also worked with a team at the Department of Sanitation and the Office of Sustainability to issue a request for information (RFI) to solicit ideas for how the City could incorporate environmental justice targets and circular waste management requirements into the request for proposal (RFP) that will be released for companies bidding on the City’s solid waste and recycling contracts.
“We’ve definitely had some good movement and conversation,” says Gauthier. “That was a good exercise to show how we should be thinking about waste management in Philly.”
Is It Too Late?
While Gauthier is hopeful, the City has put itself in the familiar position of being months away from contract expiration with no RFP in sight. Most recently, this happened in 2018 (as reported by Grid) when the recycling contracts expired with no new contract in place, and the city resorted to burning half of its recyclables.
According to one source — a Philly-area waste management professional with decades of industry experience and familiarity with how Philadelphia’s waste and recycling contracts work who requested anonymity to preserve business relationships — the absence of an RFP all but guarantees that the next contracts will simply maintain the status quo and be awarded to the current vendors. For recycling, that’s WM (formerly Waste Management), and for solid waste, that’s Reworld and WM.
For the recycling contract, there are two deterrents to potential bidders aside from WM.
Philadelphia City Councilmember Jamie Gauthier tours toxic sites in Chester, including the Reworld waste-to-energy plant.
First, the lead time before the new contract takes effect is too short for any company that doesn’t already operate a recycling facility in Philadelphia to open one by July 1, 2026. Second, the extremely short four- to seven-year recycling contract term (compared with 15 or 20 years in many peer cities) makes it so there’s no guarantee that the potential bidder will be able to recoup the cost of opening a new facility while still entering a competitive bid.
Williams underscored the latter point about contract length in his recent testimony at November’s City Council Committee on the Environment hearing on Gauthier’s bill. “Ultimately, the longer the term of the contract,” said Williams, “the more stable and the more valuable — lower — the rate is.”
The same waste management industry source says that if the City of Philadelphia truly wants to meet its sustainability goals, it must release an RFP that provides an environment for competitive bids from multiple companies. This includes, at minimum, a two-year lead time and a longer term agreement than the four to seven years that the City has typically offered.
Without this, it’s likely that WM will be the only bidder for Philadelphia’s recycling, meaning that WM will handle both the city’s recycling and solid waste. This puts the City in a precarious position because WM has shown in the past — most notably in 2018 — that it is willing to play hardball to extract higher fees from the City when it has no alternatives for its recycling.
Without a competitive bidding process, the waste management industry source said, the City could be overpaying by tens of millions of dollars for the recycling contract alone.
And when the cost of recycling substantially exceeds that of landfilling, budget concerns routinely trump sustainability goals and recyclables get landfilled. As of September 2025, Philadelphia was paying WM $100 per ton to process its recyclables. When compared to the $70 per ton it pays to dispose of solid waste, it’s easy to see the disincentive for the City to recycle, especially when the recycling processor can just as easily landfill the materials under its solid waste contract with the City.
Similarly, the short bidding window for its solid waste contract will make it difficult
Philadelphia’s waste and recycling contracts are the bottleneck preventing real change.”
candice lawton, Circular Philadelphia
for the Department of Sanitation to identify a cost-effective alternative to incineration. The Parker administration will likely use this as a reason why incineration must continue, even though critics say it will have been a problem entirely of the City’s own making, and that maintaining the status quo is baked into its contracting process. Until that changes, advocates say, there is little hope of more environmentally just or circular waste practices to replace the City’s disposal-first approach to waste management.
At the November City Council hearing, Hersh urged that “sanitation contracts should include composting to divert food waste, curbside textile collection, programs that recover construction and demolition materials.” She added, “It’s all being incinerated or landfilled.”
For people pushing for the City to prioritize sustainability, this makes Gauthier’s incineration ban bill all the more pressing. It’s one of the few levers that Council can pull to force the Parker administration to revisit its contracting practices. And if the City doesn’t revisit how it contracts waste and recycling this time around, it’ll essentially be another seven years before anyone has another chance at advancing environmental justice or circular solutions.
“Philadelphia’s waste and recycling contracts are the bottleneck preventing real change,” says Candice Lawton, executive director of Circular Philadelphia. “Everything we need — reducing waste at the source, expanding reuse and repair, building modern recycling infrastructure — requires innovative service providers offering circular solutions. Without contract reform, we stay trapped in an endless cycle of waste generation that ends in burying and burning valuable resources.”
What Happens Next?
When Grid contacted the Office of Clean and Green about Gauthier’s bill and the
waste contracts, a City of Philadelphia representative issued the following response:
“The City of Philadelphia Municipal Solid Waste RFP for new waste management contracts will be published this fall. We are hoping that this RFP will encourage multiple waste reduction companies to offer solutions that provide environmentally sustainable and fiscally responsible proposals for the City to consider that meets the vision for a safer, cleaner, and greener Philadelphia.”
But the clock is ticking, and it’s not exactly the kind of response that inspires hope among advocates that things will change. They argue that if the City were serious about sustainability, environmental justice and fiscal responsibility, it could issue two RFPs at once — one for a short-term contract as a bridge that begins in 2026 and one for a longer term contract that begins in 2027 or 2028 with the option for potential vendors to bid on a 10-, 15- or 20-year term.
“This is more than a financial decision,” said Zulene Mayfield of CRCQL at the November City Council hearing. “It’s a health and a moral decision that needs to be made. Will you commit and continue to be complicit in environmental racism?”
The Committee on the Environment voted for Gauthier’s bill to pass out of committee at the November hearing. It now heads to the full City Council for consideration.
Gauthier is placing the ball in the Parker administration’s court. “Our values are not just defined by conversation but by action. Now it remains for them to do the right thing. They control procurement in the City of Philadelphia. There’s been some cautious partnership, but ultimately it remains to be seen whether they do the right thing.” ◆
LIVE AND LEARN
the Education issue
In 2022, the Pennsylvania State Board of Education adopted new environmental literacy and sustainability standards. This is surely important — that all students in Pennsylvania learn about how to protect the environment and live sustainably — but how do we get them to take that education to heart? ¶ All the nature lovers out there know there is more to understanding the world than naming its parts and knowing how they all work together. There is the smell and feel of it all too, plus the sights and sounds that lift the topics off the page or screen and into the real world. There is the sense of wonder at it all, and that wonder can be a powerful motivator to learn and understand. ¶ In this issue, we take a look at an environmental center devoted to building more than just knowledge. We also talk to a teacher about how to connect kids to the natural world, even when they’ve only got the ordinary urban landscape to work with. ¶ We also explore schools themselves as sites of environmental action, both as polluted spaces in need of remediation and as hubs for action to generate renewable energy. ¶ We hope you come away from this issue ready to help learners of all ages connect with their world, and to make sure their world takes care of them.
• U School senior Amani Lee (left) and urban agriculture educator
Anna Herman plant seeds for the spring in North Philadelphia.
Rebuilt
A park hub reopens in Cobbs Creek BY
BERNARD BROWN
On an afternoon in late October, students from Sayre High School were trickling into the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center’s community room to take off their waders and to review what they had found in the creek. It was a scene you might expect at any environmental center, but a relatively fresh one now that the Cobbs Creek center is open again after a two-year, $1.5 million renovation.
The building, originally a horse stable
used by the Fairmount Park Guard (a park police force absorbed into the Philadelphia Police Department in 1972), opened as an environmental center in 2001 thanks to a campaign helmed by retired teacher and school administrator Carole Williams-Green. The resulting nonprofit organization, the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Education Center (I served on the organization’s board of trustees from 2009 to 2011), ran the center until 2017 when Philadelphia Parks & Recreation took over operations.
At that point, Cobbs Creek native Alicia R. Burbage, who had been involved with the center and the efforts to create it since the 1990s, started as director of operations, community outreach and civic engagement.
The pandemic forced a pause to indoor programming in 2020, though Burbage says they continued the work of connecting neighbors to the outdoors. “We did programming without walls,” she says. Once the center opened again in 2021 (I worked as a seasonal environmental educator from the summer into the fall of 2021), it was plagued by problems with its heating system and decaying roof, forcing it to close in the fall of 2023. Under Rebuild, a soda-tax-funded program to rehab libraries and park spaces, the City replaced the roof, upgraded the HVAC
system and renovated public spaces in the building, among other repairs and improvements, according to Lloyd Salasin-Deane, communications director for Rebuild.
“During the years that we were closed, programming was still going on,” run by partners such as the University of Pennsylvania as well as by City environmental educators based at other centers, Burbage says.
Although Parks & Recreation did not officially announce the center’s opening, they hosted a performing arts camp in June,
Opposite page: Nick Tonetti (left) and Andrew White are environmental educators at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center. Alicia R. Burbage has been involved in creating and maintaining the center since the 1990s.
according to Burbage. Parks & Recreation brought on environmental educators Andrew White and Nick Tonetti in June as well, and they got to work cleaning up the center’s orchard and launching programming such as weekly plant walks in the park.
The University of Pennsylvania provides educational materials and equipment and uses the center as a hub to connect with its West Philadelphia community. Danielle Darfour, a Penn junior, found herself in the center after teaching 9th grade students from Sayre High School about waterways as part of their environmental science class. “We focused on examining the diverse species in Cobbs Creek,” she says.
The building is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, but White recommends visitors walk through the woods anytime dusk to dawn, take the bridge over Cobbs Creek and explore the meadow on the other side. “When the wildflowers are in bloom, it’s just magical,” he says.
You don’t need to make it a big trip … You can walk here from your house, from your neighborhood.”
Andrew White, PPR
Both White and Tonetti emphasized how accessible the park and the center are. “It’s right here in West Philly,” Tonetti says. “It’s one of the few big green spaces you can get to by trolley, by bus or by the El. It should be more popular than it is.”
And for neighbors in Cobbs Creek, the center is right down the hill. “You don’t need to make it a big trip,” White says. “You can walk here from your house, from your neighborhood.” ◆
“I Want to Learn More About That”
A teacher talks about what works in nature education
BY BERNARD BROWN
Stephanie Kearney has taught middle school science for 20 years. She uses the outdoors as a classroom, even when what’s outside is a schoolyard and the blocks of rowhouses around Penn Alexander School in West Philadelphia. Grid talked with Kearney to learn what it takes to bring the natural sciences to life for urban students.
How did you get into teaching science? Well, I actually went to pharmacy school and ended up getting a pharmaceutical business degree. I did that for half a year before I realized I am not a salesperson.
PHOTO BY CHRIS BAKER EVENS
So I went back to school with the goal of teaching. It wasn’t my initial plan, but middle school was where I started to love science and had really great teachers, so that’s where I turned my attention.
I love biology. I love nature. I wouldn’t say I’m particularly into birding or identifying mushrooms, but I love hiking or exploring nature, whether that’s an hour away or at the school garden. I’m always looking and saying, “I want to learn more about that.”
How does nature fit into the curriculum?
The school district just purchased a new curriculum, so everyone should have quality materials. So if the previous excuse for
We need to teach kids how to live in cities with nature, to teach kids to be stewards of their environment. Our planet needs us to green our cities and be sustainable.”
Stephanie Kearney
not teaching science was “I don’t have good materials,” that excuse should be gone now.
As for nature, it takes real attention from the teacher. Teachers have to go off script to make learning units relevant to the kids, but if you’ve got a good team of teachers who understand the importance of place-based and nature education, you can figure out how to do that.
The new state curriculum standards added environmental literacy and sustainability. So kids are required to connect to their environment, but the standards don’t tell you how to teach it. The Fairmount Water Works is developing curriculum to meet the new standards, with units such as putting weather stations at schools.
Not all schools are able to take advantage of the outdoors. There is one activity for my kids about trees in Clark Park. When I shared this with other teachers [from other schools], I was met with “We don’t have trees,” and “We aren’t allowed to walk around the block because it isn’t safe.” How do you get kids connected to nature when they’re not allowed to be in nature?
What works in connecting kids with the natural world? I am a big fan of project-based learning, and I try to connect our learning to nature whenever we can. In the spring we always do big units devoted to the outdoors. There is a middle school standard for biodiversity, so we go outside and look at what we have and we come up with solutions. We create habitat in the garden. It’s authentic work. It increases their buy-in and increases engagement with the lessons because they know it’s real work.
I think that you’ve got to get them hooked initially with something that’s really cool or really exciting. I am naturally curious and passionate and I share that with my students all the time. Kids are naturally curious, but it gradually gets beaten out of them after sitting in a chair eight hours a day 10 months of the year.
It’s important to let kids discover for themselves. I’ll direct them where to look but let them go, “this is what I see.” We have an elderberry shrub outside. If you look closer, you have aphids; and look closer, you have ants; and then we have every phase of life of the ladybug. Once they realize all that happens in that space — a science concept that they discover for themselves — they get excited.
One more tip is: The quieter you are, the more you hear and the more you see because you won’t scare things away, and the closer you look, the more you see. Starting with nature drawing is good because it forces them to be quiet and focus on what they see. I force them to come up with 20 words to describe what they see. The first are easy, but then they have to think hard about how to describe that ant or leaf.
What are barriers to this kind of teaching in the school district, and how have you dealt with them? As far as classroom management, you have to set norms before you go outside and be firm with the kids who don’t follow those norms if they think it’s time for recess. Even with older kids, it can help if they get some time to release their energy. Think about how you feel after sitting in a chair all day.
I can understand why teachers are reluctant to take large groups of kids outside, especially if there are behavior challenges inside. But I’ll add that many of my challenging kids inside are the best at doing work in the garden. They love it; they thrive when doing real, hands-on work in fresh air.
Why is it important for students to learn about nature, even in an urban setting? Because more than half of the world lives in cities and that number is increasing every year. We need to teach kids how to live in cities with nature, to teach kids to be stewards of their environment. Our planet needs us to green our cities and be sustainable. ◆
Stephanie Kearney (in green jacket) connects kids to nature through authentic projects outdoors, such as setting up a weather station.
Will Schools Go Solar?
Philly schools are supposed to get millions for rooftop solar. But federal and state policies are casting shade BY
Ayear ago, advocates of solar energy across Pennsylvania were flying high. Democratic state Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler, whose South Philly district stretches from Pat’s King of Steaks to Lincoln Financial Field, had just pulled off a political Hail Mary: successfully shepherding a clean energy bill through the gridlocked State Capitol. Titled Solar for Schools, the legislation promised to provide $25 million dollars for schools to install solar arrays across the commonwealth.
A year later, the sentiment is decidedly mixed. In a state budget bill approved
KYLE BAGENSTOSE
by lawmakers in November — after an impasse that spanned more than four months — Solar for Schools was renewed for another $25 million. That appears to be a vote of confidence by lawmakers after a successful first year. Environmental nonprofit PennEnvironment calculates that the program received 88 applications to install solar at schools, totaling $88 million in requested funds, more than three times what it was equipped to pay out. Ultimately, 73
applicants across 24 counties received about $23 million, including about $2.3 million for projects at seven schools in Philadelphia, with additional projects in the suburbs.
“I’m proud of the first year,” Fiedler, who chairs the state House Energy Committee, said in a late October interview. “The ability of a school to generate their own electricity, to provide them with that energy, freedom and independence, and also that return on investment, is really exciting for me as a
This story contains reporting that first appeared in Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission.
PA State Rep. Elizabeth Fiedler visits a solar array at a school in Carlisle, Cumberland County.
parent and lawmaker.”
This year’s state budget also cleared the way for the state to use $156 million in federal Solar for All funding, which would install rooftop solar in low-income areas in Pennsylvania — another apparent boost for heliophiles in the state and city.
But upon closer inspection, the outlook isn’t quite as sunny. Renewable energy advocates say the Solar for Schools funding is only a sliver of a silver lining in the increasingly dark clouds gathering over Pennsylvania’s state solar policies. Flora Cardoni, deputy director of PennEnvironment, says that the funding for the twin solar programs was overshadowed by Democratic leadership’s decision to pull Pennsylvania out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), an interstate carbon cap-and-trade program. That initiative could have provided more than a billion dollars of clean energy funding, Cardoni says, while pushing the state’s energy mix away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.
“We would need to get a lot of policies like [the solar bills] to make up for RGGI in terms of carbon reduction,” Cardoni says.
Adding to the headwinds are changes at the federal level. Passed earlier this year, President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill took a wrecking ball to former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act and initiated steep rollbacks of federal incentives for renewables. Advocates say that many Pennsylvania school districts receiving Solar for Schools grant money had also planned to use federal incentives to pay for as much as 30% to 50% of the costs of their projects, stacking incentives to make solar as affordable as possible. But the sunsetting of those provisions has impacted the calculus.
Ron Celentano, president of the Pennsylvania Solar & Storage Industries Association, lives just outside Philadelphia and acts as a consultant to several school districts. He says he has yet to hear of any district scrapping its solar plans. But he says some have begun asking questions, and he predicts it may happen. Schools have until July 4 to begin construction in order to get a four-year runway to finish projects and obtain federal credits. But that’s a tight timeline to go through design, permitting and securing the services of a contractor when a statewide rush to start construction is un-
derway. Miss the July 4 deadline, and they’ll need to fully complete construction by the end of 2027 to qualify.
“There’s a little bit of concern to some of these schools: Are we going to make it?” Celentano says.
The issue has ramifications in Philadelphia, where four School District of Philadelphia buildings were awarded grants in the first year: Andrew Hamilton School, Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School, Northeast Community Propel Academy and W. B. Saul High School. The Community College of
Philadelphia also received a pair of grants, along with one for the Universal Audenried Charter High School. Altogether, the grants were valued at $2.28 million, with about half going to the district.
Whether or not the district has recalculated its plans or holds concerns about the looming deadlines is unclear. Brett Schaeffer, special director of policy in the Office of the Superintendent, is the district’s point person on the program. He referred Grid to a May 2025 press release, published prior to passage of the Big Beautiful Bill, that stated Solar for Schools funding will cover “up to
The ability of a school to generate their own electricity, to provide them with that energy, freedom and independence, and also that return on investment, is really exciting for me as a parent and lawmaker.”
elizabeth fiedler, State Representative
Murrell Dobbins Career and Technical Education High School is slated to have solar panels installed through the Solar for Schools legislation.
50 percent of construction costs for solar energy projects” at the district buildings.
“Clean energy rebates and incentives will further discount project installation costs, with District funds covering the remainder,” it added.
But asked in early November about the current status, Shaeffer said only that “the projects won’t begin until the spring.” Principals of several of the recipient schools also did not respond to requests for information. The district did not respond to inquiries about the specifics of how it’s navigating the changes.
“The School District is continuing its work on the four solar projects it received state grant funding for, and is excited that the state recently reauthorized the Solar for Schools grant program for a second year,” spokesperson Christina Clark wrote in a brief email.
The $156 million in Solar for All funding faces the same challenges, and then some. Although state lawmakers have now approved use of the Biden-era federal funding, the actual money remains tied up in the court system after the Trump administration attempted to cancel it.
“An important tool”
Katie Bartolotta, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships for the Philadelphia Energy Authority (PEA), a quasi-governmental entity working on clean energy development, presents an optimistic outlook. She says the PEA consulted with the district on its Solar for Schools applications as part of a long-running relationship between her group and the City. She believes meeting the construction deadlines for federal incentives is “completely doable.”
Ben Block, communications manager for PEA, adds that the school district has a “long track record of implementing successful clean energy projects,” pointing toward what it calculates is about $250 million in energy efficiency upgrades at 24 schools in recent years.
Statewide, advocates have touted Solar for Schools’ potential to break through partisan battle lines in rural counties, where there’s plenty of space for large ground-level arrays. Indeed, one of the program’s most vocal cheerleaders is the Carlisle Area School District, a small town district in a
If the state can fix those things — if they’re willing to — then we can be moving this forward without a lot of other action.”
sharon pilla, Pennsylvania Solar Center
region that went for Trump in 2024.
But Bartolotta says the task to install solar at schools is trickier in Philadelphia, where space is at a premium and City and school district administrators have to take into account aging facilities.
“The one thing [Solar for Schools] didn’t have was funding for enabling upgrades: roof repair, electrical upgrades, anything like that,” Bartolotta says.
So, planners had to get choosy, identifying buildings that had the spatial and physical capacity for solar. They encountered a few happy accidents along the way, Bartolotta says: Dobbins is a career and technical school in North Philadelphia with a building trades program that could benefit from a first-hand look at solar arrays, and Hamilton, a K-8 in Cobbs Creek, has long been in talks with the University of Pennsylvania on going solar.
Assuming the projects move forward, Bartolotta sees them as a critical step in the district’s efforts to shift to sourcing clean energy. She’s aware of only a handful of buildings in the district’s inventory of more than 300 that already have solar, and saw Solar for Schools as “an important tool” to move the district further along the learning curve, especially if there were to be renewing pots of federal and state money.
“We worked with their capital team to say, ‘Hey, this is just the first round. This is a chance to establish and see what this looks like’,” Bartolotta says. “And once folks start putting their projects into service and start to see the savings they can realize on an annual basis, I imagine support could grow.”
But there’s yet another challenge to schools to bring their systems online quickly enough to realize the expiring federal benefits. Celentano says there are application delays at
Pennsylvania electric utilities, such as PECO, for those seeking to connect rooftop solar and other similarly-sized ground arrays to the grid. PECO did not respond to requests for comment, but other utilities across the state, such as PPL, have said their queues can take as long as three years to clear for complex projects, the kind of delay that could risk some Solar for Schools recipients missing federal incentive deadlines.
Pennsylvania Utility Commission spokesperson Nils Hagen-Frederiksen confirmed that applications for some arrays are taking time to process, given cost and safety considerations, along with an application rush ahead of federal deadlines.
“The Commission continues to review interconnection-related issues statewide to ensure that the process remains timely, transparent, and fair for all customers,” Hagen-Frederiksen says.
Sharon Pillar, executive director of the nonprofit Pennsylvania Solar Center, says the issue is a focal point for solar advocates who have been disappointed by the legislature and its recent budget deal. In early November, the advocacy group Vote Solar launched a petition asking the PUC to do more to facilitate rooftop solar, such as requiring transparency into utilities’ solar connection queues and creating “clear, enforceable timelines” for applications.
“If the state can fix those things — if they’re willing to — then we can be moving this forward without a lot of other action,” Pillar said. ◆
Breathing Easy
Through advocacy and judicial oversight, the School District of Philadelphia might move past asbestos
BY BERNARD BROWN
In June, the School District of Philadelphia’s long-running struggle to protect staff and students from asbestos in its aging buildings came to a head with federal criminal charges and an agreement with the U.S. Justice Department to take care of the problem once and for all.
The Justice Department alleges that the Philadelphia School District violated the Asbestos Hazard Emergency Response Act, a federal law requiring schools to monitor their buildings for asbestos and to quickly remediate them if they find the toxic mineral, long used as insulation. Rather than proceed to a trial, the Justice Department and the school district entered into a deferred prosecution agreement, placing the district under judicial oversight as it inspects schools and either removes or seals up remaining asbestos.
“Parents, educators, and community members had been sounding the alarm about this issue since before I was elected,” says City Councilmember Kendra Brooks. “We’ve known for years that the neglect of our school buildings is harmful to the point of being a crime. This agreement is one step toward the transparency and accountability that Philadelphia families have always deserved.”
This August the district announced the full reopening of Frankford High School after a $29.9 million renovation. According to a district press release, work included the removal
well as new wall panels to shield plaster that could still contain asbestos. The renovation also took care of other problems afflicting many of the district’s aging buildings: installing 83 new window air conditioners, refinishing 75,000 square feet of wood and linoleum floors, and refurbishing the auditorium and gym, among other improvements.
Frankford High wasn’t alone. “We keep finding asbestos,” said Jerry Roseman, di-
pational safety and health for the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers (PFT) in a 2023 Grid article. Roseman pointed to 10 schools closed for remediation in 2019 and 2020, and six in 2023. Frankford High School was one of those six schools, closed after a maintenance team found asbestos in April of 2023. Brooks is optimistic that the district has finally gotten on top of the problem. “The agreement — along with years of advoca-
Philadelphia City Councilmember Kendra Brooks speaks about the need for increased investment in school facilities at an education rally.
GREEN PAGES
Shop your values at these local businesses led to increased staff and resources going to asbestos monitoring. It brings me some relief, as a School District parent, to know that the District is now regularly inspecting buildings for damaged asbestos,” she says.
The PFT and education advocates such as Brooks argue that the district’s asbestos problems are symptoms of decades of underfunding and deferred maintenance. According to Arthur Steinberg, president of the PFT, interviewed for a 2024 Grid article about the district’s maintenance woes, its maintenance backlog had by then grown to about $7 billion, not including buildings that would be cheaper to replace than repair.
That kind of money will not be coming from Harrisburg anytime soon. The 2025-26 Pennsylvania state budget, passed on Nov.
This agreement is one step toward the transparency and accountability that Philadelphia families have always deserved.”
Kendra Brooks, Philadelphia City Council
12, included only $125 million for school facilities improvements statewide.
Although the district renovated Frankford High, it still has not released a comprehensive facilities plan. In 2023, superintendent Tony Watlington had promised City Council that a facilities plan would be completed by June 2024. Grid reached out to the district for this update and was told by Monique Braxton, deputy chief of communications, that “the facilities plan will be released this winter.” ◆
BEAUTY
Hair Vyce Studio
Multicultural hair salon located in University City servicing West Philly & South Jersey since 2013. We specialize in premier hair cuts, color & natural hair for all ages. (215) 921-9770 hairvyce.com
BOOK STORE
Books & Stuff
They can ban books in our libraries and schools, but they can’t ban the books in your home library. Grow your home library! Black woman-owned online shop for children, teens & adults. booksandstuff.info
COMPOSTING
Back to Earth Compost Crew
Residential curbside compost pickup, commercial pick-up, five collection sites & compost education workshops. Montgomery County & parts of Chester County. First month free trial. backtoearthcompost.com
Bennett Compost
The area’s longest running organics collection service (est 2009) serving all of Philadelphia with residential and commercial pickups and locally-made soil products. 215.520.2406 bennettcompost.com
Circle Compost
We’re a woman-owned hyper-local business. We offer 2 or 5 gallon buckets & haul with e-bikes & motor vehicles. We offer finished compost, lawn waste pickups & commercial services. 30 day free trial! circlecompost.com
EATS
The Franklin Fountain
The Franklin Fountain now offers returnable reusable pints of ice cream in Vanilla Bean, Chocolate & Caramelized Banana! Our ice cream is made with PA dairy & all natural ingredients. franklinfountain.com
EDUCATION
Kimberton Waldorf School
A holistic education for students in preschool12th grade. Emphasizes creativity, critical thinking, nature, the arts & experiential learning. Register for an Open House! (610) 933-3635 kimberton.org
SunGate Educational Community
Microschool for up to age 15. Full academic curriculum, movement, nature & arts. Social learning, hands-on & project based. Learning differences welcome. Sliding Scale. sungatecooperative.org
Echo House Electric
Local electrician who works to provide high-quality results on private & public sector projects including old buildings, new construction, residential, commercial & institutional. Minority business. echohouseelectric.com
FARM
Hope Hill Lavender Farm
Established in 2011, our farm offers shopping for made-on-premise lavender products in a scenic environment. Honey, bath & body, teas, candles, lavender essential oil and more. hopehilllavenderfarm.com
FASHION
Stitch And Destroy
STITCH AND DESTROY creates upcycled alternative fashions & accessories from pre-loved clothing & textile waste. Shop vintage, books, recycled wares & original fashions. 523 S 4th St. stitchanddestroy.com
GREEN BURIAL
Laurel Hill
With our commitment to sustainability, Laurel Hill Cemeteries & Funeral Home specializes in green burials and funerals, has a variety of ecofriendly products to choose from, and offers pet aquamation. laurelhillphl.com
GREEN CLEANING
Holistic Home LLC
Philly’s original green cleaning service, est 2010. Handmade & hypoallergenic products w/ natural ingredients & essential oils. Safe for kids, pets & our cleaners. 215-421-4050 HolisticHomeLLC@gmail.com
GROCERY
Kimberton Whole Foods
A family-owned and operated natural grocery store with seven locations in Southeastern PA, selling local, organic and sustainably-grown food for over thirty years. kimbertonwholefoods.com
MAKERS
Mount Airy Candle Co.
Makers of uniquely scented candles, handcrafted perfumery and body care products. Follow us on Instagram @mountairycandleco and find us at retailers throughout the region. mountairycandle.com
MENTAL HEALTH
Mount Airy Candle Co.
Makers of uniquely scented candles, handcrafted perfumery and body care products. Follow us on Instagram @mountairycandleco and find us at retailers throughout the region. mountairycandle.com
RECYCLING
Philadelphia Recycling Company
Full service recycling company for office buildings, manufacturing & industrial. Offering demo & removal + paper, plastics, metals, furniture, electronics, oils, wood & batteries philadelphiarecycling.co
WELLNESS
Center City Breathe Hello, Philadelphia. Are you ready to breathe? centercitybreathe.com
ELECTRICIAN
Preparing for a career in climate communication
“I’ve always been interested in communication. I love thinking about how we talk about things,” says Lotus Kaufman (MES ’25). “There are people who might not care about climate change—but if we can talk about it in ways that matter to them, in ways that are accessible and relevant, then we can connect with them on these issues.” While Lotus majored in communication for her undergraduate degree, submatriculating in Penn’s Master of Environmental Studies (MES) allowed her to learn the foundations of the field and design the environmental studies degree of her dreams.
At Penn, Lotus supplemented her core curriculum with courses in communication, negotiation, and leadership. She also garnered substantial professional experience with internships and fellowships at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, and the World Wildlife Fund among other environmental organizations. But her future career might take her into any sector, she says. “Every career is a career in climate,” adds Lotus. “Now more than ever, everything is about climate change and how we adapt moving forward. And we’re going to need everybody on board for that.”