Quench: The Cleaner, Greener, More Affordable Water Cooler for Philadelphia

Philadelphia Water Quality: Yesterday

The City of Brotherly Love is in the crux of two mighty rivers, the Schuylkill and Delaware. But even with fresh water literally on either side of the city, colonial Philadelphia was fraught with frequent and widespread epidemics. In the 1700s, it was common for Philadelphians to dump industrial waste and human sewage into the creeks and streams to be carried away to the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, which unfortunately also provided drinking water to the city.

The mounting exposure to bacteria and pollutants led the city to build one of the first water and wastewater systems. The surface creeks and streams became the framework for this infrastructure system. Sewers in creek beds cost-effectively used gravity flow to move the wastewater away from the city and allowed city planners to create the grid layout of Philadelphia. However, this systematic erasing of surface creeks and streams has changed the hydrological conditions. Of the 283 miles of streams that once flowed through Philadelphia to carry runoff to the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, only 118 miles remain today.

It wasn’t until the early 20th Century when city planners realized the negative effects of piping streams and the benefits of creating public parks instead. In 1815, city planners combined the beauty of nature and the science of engineering to create the awe-inspiring Fairmount Water Works. Check out the video below to learn more about Fairmount Water Works.

Philadelphia passed the Purity of Water Act in 1905 to try to curb the sewage pollution evident in the Schuylkill and Delaware Rivers, the act was not enforced until the 1950s. To combat the sewage-filled intake sources, the city began adding a lot of chlorine to the filtered water, creating the world-famous Schuylkill Punch.

Philadelphia Water Quality: Today

While the Schuylkill River has become a National Heritage Area and a scenic river, Philadelphia still adds chlorine and other chemicals to improve the cleanliness of drinking water. Philadelphia water has a predominantly chlorinous smell with an earthy, musty scent from algae growth.

Like many older cities, most of Philadelphia’s water mains and water infrastructure are cast iron pipes, the drinking water industry standard until the mid-1960s. The average age of Philadelphia water line is about 78 years old, though older areas of Philadelphia might have pipes that are between 150 and 200 years old! Older cast iron pipes are prone to corrosion and biofilm contamination from chemical reactions. These chemical reactions create clusters of corrosion and bacteria along the inside of the pipe, diminishing the space that the drinking water travels through. Sometimes these clusters break off and travel with your water to your faucet, resulting in water cloudiness, red water, and off-taste and odor.

Quench Water Coolers – A Better Drinking Water System in Philadelphia

No need to worry about what your office’s drinking water might have picked up on its journey to your glass. Quench offers a full complement of filtration and purification technologies to remove sediment, reduce chemical contaminants, including lead, and get rid of off-tastes and odors. That’s how we can guarantee that a Quench office water cooler produces crisp, clean, great-tasting water – and at a fraction of the price of bottled water delivery services.