Ben Franklin’s Battle Over Pollution

Historic Dock Creek Marker

By Kyle Bagenstose 

Plenty of visitors to Philadelphia have caught a glimpse of Benjamin Franklin’s old privy well, encased in glass amidst the old foundations of his former home at 4th and Market Streets in Old City. It’s a bit of an odd landmark for sure: most old homesteads urge people to ponder how their historical inhabitants lived, not what they ate.

However, in Franklin’s day, the prevailing odors in the area in fact did not emanate from his toilet. Instead, it was that of the slaughterhouses, tanneries, and breweries that dotted his neighborhood and dumped their putrid waste into nearby Dock Creek.

That waterway, which once snaked its way through Old City along two primary branches, has long since been buried and converted into a sewer, but its remnants can still be found, as can a history of Franklin’s fight against the creek’s degradation.

During an April 2024 visit to Philadelphia to attend a conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists, Bill Kovarik, a historian and professor at Radford University, hosted a historical tour on Franklin’s water war. Leading a group down the course of the buried creek, much of which now runs underneath the serpentine, cobblestoned, and aptly named Dock Street, Kovarik explained Franklin’s support for a 1739 petition that sought to expel polluting industries from the surrounding area.

Kovarik, also a veteran environmental journalist, has taken a deep interest in Franklin’s fight for clean water. In his view, Franklin’s work here offers a powerful testimonial that advocating for the environment was not a new-age concept borne out of the countercultural movement of the 1960s, but indeed has a cultural heritage that stretches all the way back to one of the nation’s most renowned founding fathers.

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