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At the border of the international airport, along the Cobbs Creek riverline, is Philadelphia’s corner, Eastwick, also known as “The Meadows.”
For Philadelphia natives, Eastwick has been a semi-rural community, neighboring Bartram’s Garden, the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge and Cobbs Creek. Despite the attractive, quiet, country-esque features of the city’s furthest southwestern neighborhood, the community has grown into an eco-resilient camaraderie of friends, family and neighbors over decades of flooding in the area.
The area has historically always been a marshland, due to its proximity to the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers and has seen damage from many storms and hurricanes through the decades.
Affectionately known as the “Planet Streets,” each avenue is named after a planet – Saturn Place, Venus Place, and Mars Place. The Planet Streets are some of Eastwick’s most flood-prone areas. Furthermore, with climate change, more of the neighborhood is vulnerable.
While miles of green spaces are free and accessible to residents, the area’s flood-prone nature makes it harder for residents to maintain their homes. After Tropical Storm Isaias brought flooding and power outages in 2020, residents brought it upon themselves to save each other from further flooding after going years without federal aid.
Wilson Alexander’s Eastwick residence flooded several times, leaving him and his family to deal with a totaled car and mold, among other damage.
“People in Eastwick … live in a crisis every day,” Alexander said. “When it rains, the first thing they’re thinking about is flooding.”
“We were left in our neighborhood with homes … that were damaged by a very serious storm. Nobody was coming to help,” longtime resident Victor Jackson and vice chairperson with the neighborhood organization Eastwick United CDC told WHYY in 2022.
In early May, a pilot program launched flood alarms to help residents prepare before flooding hit their homes. This comes after six years of delayed prevention, erosive climate change issues, and federal cuts under the Trump administration. Residents can now get notifications from sensors and cameras installed across the area to get real-time information about how likely or unlikely floods are to happen – a delight to long-time residents aiming to prepare for the tide.
Director of Philadelphia’s Office of Emergency Management Dominick Mireles said that “listening to residents, addressing their concerns, and incorporating their ideas into potential solutions is critical to creating safer and stronger communities.”
“I’m proud of the inter-agency collaboration by our city departments, in cooperation with our residents to provide them with the emergency awareness and preparedness tools and resources they need to be more prepared for flooding,” Mireles added
Under “Eastwick: From Recovery to Resilience,” a city initiative from the Office of Sustainability, Philly has already created certain barriers along waterlines, including levees and berms, to contain or redirect water.
The city has also offered residents buyouts — Philly will buy flood-prone residences from willing homeowners and turn the properties into natural use. All programs are funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the William Penn Foundation, and the City of Philadelphia.
Residents say the progress made is a result of their advocacy. Eastwick is the southernmost neighborhood in Philadelphia, and after the slow response from officials and environmental studies of the area, the city is now slated to build the Eastwick Near-Term Flood Barrier – an interim project aimed to protect vulnerable residents and increase flood resilience while they still implement a long-term solution.
At the Eastwick riverside, Crystal Jefferson said in a March town hall meeting that former protective water barriers were “very easily knocked down,” and hopes that the city speeds up the process to more long-lasting solutions to the flooding.
“We’ve seen three-wheelers go down the trail,” Jefferson said. “They got knocked over during the last serious storm. They are plastic – there are no boulders to prevent a car or anything from coming through.”
The eco-resilience is palpable and more tangible, given the city’s initiative. The program has hosted two Eastwick community days with hundreds of participants in attendance. There have also been a few open houses, council meetings, as well as smaller community meetings throughout the last year, in order to help residents.
