PHILADELPHIA—Some 280 years after a river-swimming Benjamin Franklin petitioned to curb water pollution here, the city is still struggling to meet the challenge, according to water advocates who assembled along the banks of one of its two main rivers on Monday.
While Franklin’s concerns were primarily about cowhides and horns dumped by industrial tanneries, today it’s human waste spilling from archaic sewer systems that impairs the city’s waterways and harms residents, according to the nonprofit environmental group PennEnvironment.
For years, the group and other advocates have pressed the Philadelphia Water Department (PWD)—purveyor of both drinking water and sewer services to 1.5 million Philadelphians—as well as the Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority, across the Delaware River in New Jersey, over the pollution. Both systems are heavily reliant on so-called “combined sewers,” a network of pipes dating to the 19th century that combine sewage and stormwater and that intentionally overflow into waterways during rainstorms…