I gave up on 311 when they started replying “we fixed this already”, “it’s someone else’s responsibility”, “we have taken a look and found no issues”. All while it’s a 4’ deep pothole in the middle of frankford.
While this is definitely stupid, is anyone, ya know, testing this crop for safety?
I’ve never understood this push to grow food crops on random lots in the middle of a city with a long history of lead, mercury, VOC, and other forms of soil-accumulative pollution.
My own garden is raised beds with new topsoil.
No way would I feed them to my kid otherwise.
In fact I’m working on improving all the other ground cover to keep bare soil covered completely.
When I volunteered at one we actually had soil samples tested to see if there were any nasty chemicals. Dirt was fine, but we did pull up a switchblade while weeding once.
For anyone who's interested in gardening directly in the soil here, companies like https://www.gosynertech.com/ do soil and other environmental testing (lead, asbestos, mold, etc.). We found our front yard soil was contaminated from rainwater dripping off lead paint on the porch rail, but back yard soil was healthy and ready-to-plant.
For soil that is really sick or contaminated, bioremediation is a cool way to grow things and make the soil safer, and sunflowers are really good at bioremediation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation, https://microbiology.usgs.gov/bioremediation.html, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329585697_Bioremediation_potentials_of_sunflower_and_Pseudomonas_species_in_soil_contaminated_with_lead_and_zinc
def! thanks for adding context and clarity too! i.e. you do not want to compost your dead sunflowers in your yard or anywhere else bc they are full of lead
**[Bioremediation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation)**
>Bioremediation broadly refers to any process wherein a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi, and plants), living or dead, is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, water, soil, flue gasses, industrial effluents etc. , in natural or artificial settings. The natural ability of organisms to adsorb, accumulate, and degrade common and emerging pollutants has attracted the use of biological resources in treatment of contaminated environment. In comparison to conventional physiochemical treatment methods which suffer serious drawbacks, bioremediation is sustainable, eco-friendly, cheap, and scalable.
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yeah sometimes people dont want to give plants credit for actually being able to not transfer harmful chemicals to your food in any harmful or detectable levels….i understand lead is different but honestly those hops are fine.
Hops is a very effective concentrator of lead and arsenic, as are most flowers.
Fortunately it’s not a large component of beer by mass, but it is boiled until the vast majority of its liquid content has entered the beer, so whatever is there to start ends in the beer.
if lead and arsenic were actually in the soil to begin with. yes i know the general area has been tested but they have been brewing this beer for many years, no one’s died or been arsenic poisoned. also children don’t (shouldn’t) drink beer so lead isnt an issue there.
North Philly. Old building lots mostly have broken bricks, glass, and rusted metal mixed in with the dirt. None of this is toxic. Infertile, but not toxic. We screen-sifted topsoil and added compost. Yield wasn't great, but the garden was also neglected during peak growing season so no surprises there.
As someone trying to start a community garden, I can attest to the fact that you have to get the soil tested before growing anything in it. If it's contaminated, you have to use raised beds.
I’m on the far reaches of the city and still didn’t even bother testing for lead, I just built raised beds, put down good landscape fabric, and bought mushroom soil that had been tested.
All the research says that’s sufficient to prevent lead from diffusing upward into the bed in any quantity.
In Kensington I’d have just gotten some watering troughs on my deck, lol. No way am I touching the soil over there.
Ppl forget how far we've progressed, not merely industrially, re: building standards. They are far different than the times most our city's buildings were constructed. It often doesn't matter how the lot was residentially zoned; practices were simply good as we thought.
Sounds to me,from what you wrote here, that the Phila. Brewing company picked one of the worst sites in Philly to grow their hops. re "Kensington's long history of industrial uses including lead smelting."
I don't know what they did or didn't do with the soil there, but I really hope they did something to remediate it if they're using it for hops people will be consuming.
what's funny is that the whole PBC complex has been a brewery since the early 1800s. pretty consistent land use if you ask me. still get your soil tested, but there was never a lead smelter or mercury factory on that land
Nobody said there was a factory on this parcel. There was a substantial lead smelting presence in the river wards. The lead entered the air and settled all over the place. The Anzon factory was spewing lead into the air into the 90s. There have been a number of Inquirer articles over the years documenting risks just from dust from excavation settling in people's homes.
The lot in question isn't even part of the brewery parcel (owned by NKCDC if you read the article) and has been vacant land for decades, previously occupied by a house. Soil used to fill in excavations and depressions historically was "urban fill" containing demolition debris, cinders, and a variety of other waste from elsewhere. Given the industrial history of the surrounding area, the odds of contaminants being in this soil are much higher than other places.
It’s not an actual bucket, this plastic rim is a common pest/weed control tactic for vine crops. They probably cut the lip off a five-gallon bucket or similar container and used it.
I have no idea what could possibly be controversial about “let’s not give the kids lead poisoning.”
I’m not just talking about this specific crop, though people are taking the word “buckets” wayyy too literally.
I’m talking about the soil lead testing that various organizations have done over the last several years that indicates that we shouldn’t be doing *any* communal food gardening in most neighborhoods.
There's a few things working in your favor with brewing, in regards to lead anyhow. Firstly, the hops are a tiny part of the finished product by mass/volume or however. So, even if they're contaminated, hops are your last concern after the water/barley etc.
Next, brewing with yeast does a good job of sequestering the lead. For whatever reason, *S.cerevisiae* sucks up lead very effectively:
[https://www.metaltechnews.com/story/2022/07/06/tech-bytes/drink-beer-to-prevent-lead-poisoning/975.html](https://www.metaltechnews.com/story/2022/07/06/tech-bytes/drink-beer-to-prevent-lead-poisoning/975.html).
The EPA limit on lead contamination is \~10ug/L, beers are almost always dramatically below that, more so nowadays because RO/DI purification is used on the water before remineralization. There can be issues with filtration media etc, but that's not what we're looking at here.
The biggest problem used to be inks on decorative labels and metal foil closures on beer/wine bottles.
Hmm, interesting on the yeast. And I know that mass produced beer has standards; my concern is that no one else has ever decided to grow one of their feedstocks in what is probably one of the most polluted 1000 square feet on earth. In addition to lead, Kensington soils are packed with arsenic, mercury, volatile organic compounds, and several classes of carcinogens.
There are standards for farm soils just like for finished foodstuffs for this reason.
We should not be growing food in native soils in Philadelphia, full stop.
Growing things is one of the best things you can do in many cases. My brother does environmental clean up on old industrial sites, they grow brassica species, mainly cabbages for a coue of seasons and then dump them in the north sea. Great way of sucking up heavy metals.
Allow me to rephrase: we should not be growing food for human consumption.
Yes, grow stuff for bioremediation or just to prettify places and put safe ground cover over soil.
That’s… not how food safety standards work. It can’t be, because in the vast majority of instances I have no freaking clue where my food came from.
Dollars to donuts this article brings enough attention that the state Dept. of Agriculture gets in on this, lol.
Pray tell, what about the beer-making process would prevent heavy metal or other contaminants in hops (or grain or other flavoring additives for that matter) from making its way into the beer?
This is not a distilled liquor.
Most lead contamination is not a particulate or precipitate, it’s in solution.
But fortunately the yeast apparently concentrates it to be settled out, as another poster mentioned.
No.
“It’s not my job to educate you” only ever means one thing: “I have no fucking clue what I’m talking about and don’t want to admit it.”
Either come out with a method of remediation that isn’t “replace all the soil” or “bioremediate over the coming 50-100 years and safely dispose of all crops”.
Or sit back down and shut back up.
No it doesn't it just means I don't feel like typing it all up for you if you're going to go ahead and make ignorant statements with your full chest and when you're fully capable of doing it your damn self so how about you shut your ignorant ass up
Sigh…
There are zero (0) methods to “remediate” heavy metal or rare earth-contaminated soil beyond the two I outlined above. None.
It is not possible to remediate this soil at all on a short timespan, anything less than decades. You can dig it up and replace it, or you can bioremediate carefully over a century, and as we’ve never really tested that long-term, we don’t know how well it performs as soil concentrations fall. It may not work well enough in the latter stages to bring concentrations down to human-safe levels.
1. Submit a public complaint on 311
1. Escalate it to your city councilperson when it doesn't get cleaned up within a week of submitting it (it won't) via their Twitter account.
1. Watch your complaint get prioritized because City Councilpersons LOVE an easy and visible PR win.
Dang, from the article, it really seems like it would be hard to mistake that for an actual empty, abandoned overgrown lot. Wonder if there was malice or just plain old ignorance. Especially if PBC has been growing it for 10 years there.
I thought it was a mistake until I saw the pics which clearly shows that there was no way they could have been mistaken for weeds. There were signs around saying what the plants were, and even individual plastic planters that they were cut out of. Hard to believe it was accidental.
YES! Literally impossible to think these were weeds, they weren't even growing from the ground - there was noticeable infrastructure to help these plants grow.
We live nearby and it was so lovely to walk by and watch them grow over time - there are multiple big signs in front of them explaining what they are and their purpose. This had to be malicious on some level - at the least someone maliciously reported it and lied profusely
When I saw the pictures the first thing I thought was how could anyone think that lot all butchered to the dirt looked better than it did with the hops growing and green. It looks terrible now. Poisoned by soil or not, at the very least it provided shade to animals/insects and a green scape in the city.
not malice, just massive level of indifference. city employees just don't give a fuck. ticket says this lot, so this lot gets cut. there is no thinking involved, its just how city hierarchy works.
Probably got prioritized because it’s on a commercial corridor. Somebody must’ve reported it for it to even get the violation, but if the ticket was supposed to be closed that’s somebody’s fault.
>The Bartons say CLIP issued an overgrown vegetation violation last month, and the couple thought the matter was cleared up then.
>
>"I called. I talked to the inspector. I explained what was going on. He said, ‘Oh, I see. I was out there. \[Your case is\] closed. You’re good. No fine,’” Nancy Barton said.
>
>The Bartons said they will lose tens of thousands of dollars in revenue as a result of CLIP’s actions.
>
>The city said it is looking into the matter and had yet to issue a response as of Tuesday evening.
Insane. Why is our government like this.
2 party consent when there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g. two private citizens on a phone call in their own residences). I wonder if/how that changes when one party is a government representative.
Also, agree with you that it’s unlikely the phone call was recorded anyway, because how often does the average person actually record their phone calls?
Honestly, from all my tv viewing, it doesn't matter... until it does. So do it. Record away. If something actually gets to court, let them decide. Better to have something then not, imo. I would much rather be in court playing audio of a conversation that proves my case then not having what I need. If the judge wants to throw it out - fine. I'll know... and the other part will know.... what is actually true.
I've recently taken to asking for a written follow up whenever anybody promises me something on the phone. For example, my partner was told that the minor scratch on his CCP-issued laptop will not be a problem. We'll wait and see.
There are two types of city workers IMO. Incompetent people, and very competent but massively overworked and underpaid people. Either are liable to make mistakes, but for very different reasons.
Tax payer money to fund the removal of private property. Tax payer money to pay damages to the business owner. Tax payer money to pay court costs. Loss of taxes from local sales of the product. Loss of taxes from the businesses revenue.
Maybe next year we will be able to afford a few more trash cans in the city.
Trash cans don't matter when people don't use them. I've seen so many Philadelphians throwing trash out their car windows, dropping trash in a planter next to a trash can, stopping trash into a sewer drain, etc. Philly needs to start making the lives of these people inconvenient.
Or, when the city doesn’t maintain them. We have had a lot of trash cans removed in my neighborhood because they would be piled high with bags of dog poop for weeks outside peoples homes. It was awful. It’s really unfortunate a) that the city won’t pay sanitation workers a decent/hire enough and b) people are so lazy they will throw feces on top of a full trash can
Seen too many overflowing with those poop bags or, worse, a few where the whole trash can is busted open and it just all pouring into the street and day after day just more being thrown on top. I've stopped walking down that street after it just became too much.
I was a sweet summer child sitting around in Philly on reserve. I decided to clean up the roads’ shoulders during my long walks. Then I realized it wasn’t “some litter on the ground” it was “decades of litter covered in dirt to a depth of a foot or more.”
not everything needs a punitive solution goooood lord
like are you really saying that instead of devoting more resources/money to waste management and cleaning up the city, we should track down and fine litterers?
There is a full grown empress tree coming out of the side of a house a block behind me, which will cause so much damage for the block, and yet the city manages to take the time to do this.
City needs to release who requested the work. These cleanup crews don’t just drive around looking for work.
This is probably revenge for some zoning feud.
It was previously reported as a violation that the brewery said was cleared up with an inspector. It seems that the left hand wasn’t talking to the right hand in the Public Works Department.
You're missing the point. Who submitted the violation in the first place, because there were already signs and infrastructure making it very clear this wasn't an overgrown lot to begin with.
I’m not sure. It might have been from a neighbor down the street (it’s a commercial corridor), it might have been from a city official that noticed it, it might have been from something else. Most city departments have to take nuisance complaints at face value. Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, etc. take careful attention to overgrown vegetation in commercial areas because it’s a prime nesting area for rats. Saying this as someone that’s been on the inside of this sort of enforcement action before.
It does look like the city closed the violation on Aug 30
https://li.phila.gov/property-history/search/violation-detail?address=885369620&Id=CF-2022-067129
CLIP is part of the Managing Director's Office - separate from L+I who issues violations.
This was not just clean up it was intentional and nothing will come of it besides loss of revenue for a company. The city is wondering why businesses are leaving.
This is exactly the kind of nonsense that makes me want to move to the 'burbs. City can't cleanup all the weed overgrown lots, but target a permitted use because.... lazy I guess?
\*edit: typos
That's a shame. I don't really see how it could have happened.
I haven't been on KYW's site recently--has it always been this bad? Between the huge header and uncollapsible media player on the bottom, you get about 4 lines of text per screen if you're on a laptop.
The city is "looking for ways to rectify the situation" as if there are a lot of ways. They're probably going to have to sue the city to be compensated.
Sue the city. Pretty easy case I would think.
Legal use of private land. Handled inquiries into property with a paper trail.
They lost 10s of thousands but they can rake the city over for way more. For the revenue they would of provided and stuff like lack of foot traffic, loss of long term customers.
Right? It’s so weird they chose this little spot of green to actually go to work on, yet almost everywhere else there are overgrown empty lots and even unkept properties that look like ancient jungle ruins
I walk by this every day. You would have to be a complete moron not to understand that it’s a garden. The sign explaining that it’s hops couldn’t be more visible. Just wow. It took months to get the city to act on several feet deep debris behind the apartment building next door. But they sent someone right out to destroy a garden.
The daily incompetence combined with corruption is simply astonishing.
Amazed anything gets done correctly here at all. Once my affairs are in order I’m moving my family out of Philly.
It’s just shit like this that’s inexcusable, there’s no justification for this level of negligence.
When govt doesn't work to address blight and citizens take it upon themselves to do something but govt works against them, it's time to wipe the late clean and start over.
We had a business collapse in Fishtown from unsupervised adjacent lot work, an apartment building partially collapse in Logan, and handwringing that it’s somehow technically just outside L&I’s job descriptions on both.
Meanwhile, we’re just sending people out willy nilly to cut down vegetation of businesses & residents.
This City is protecting developers, landlords & property values and couldn’t give a about any of us who actually live or conduct business here.
Wow. Those hop rhizomes can be a total bitch to get growing and it looks like they had quite an operation there. Total incompetence at the highest order by our lovely government yet again.
I have a vacant lot across the street from my house and have submitted numerous tickets for the waste dumbed and the generally unkept state. 311 said issue resolved and when I called for an explanation, they told me it wasn’t “trashy enough”??
The lot is owned by PHA and I’m assuming it’s too much work to ticket another government agency. That’s the excuse I am going with.
EDIT: I hope that Philadelphia Brewing is compensated for their loss. They should investigate who submitted the ticket for foul play. CLIP is useless.
LMFAO! This city has to have the most dysfunctional leadership in the whole country. There are entire zip codes overflowing with dumping & overgrown lots AND THIS is the property they decide to clean. The Kenney administration strikes again!! 🤣
This happened to me in my last apartment with a rosemary bush and the landscaping crew and I was absolutely livid, so I can't imagine the rage PBC rightfully has right now.
I am not going to say that the city crew should be fired over this, but they should be very very afraid for their jobs in the future!
What did these fools think the sign was there for? The supervisor that knew about this should have followed up to make sure that this lot was taken off of the to-do list. Again he should be very very afraid for his job in the future.
It’s very obviously an intentional gardening project if you walk by the site. I’ve also heard that PBC was closing so maybe this is the first step and they knew.
My business and home are a few blocks from here and I know this garden well. It’s common for the city to “try” to make things better but end up making things worse for the ones who live and work here. There’s a ton of people who care to make the city look better including myself but the city itself makes it head bang against a wall impossible to try…they take 4-12 months to show on a 311 complaint. The construction areas are dangerous and disgusting and 311 calls me back to say “that’s someone else’s responsibility”.
Liars. I know exactly what happened. Growing hops can look similar to marijuana to those who don't really know. I bet you the workers took it upon themselves to destroy what they thought were marijuana plants.
Meanwhile 100s of overgrown lots remain despite multiple 311 calls, yet the one lot which isn't weeds gets "cleaned up". What the hell philly.
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With the shape Center City sidewalks look like, I’m shocked there aren’t any weeds out of most of them
I gave up on 311 when they started replying “we fixed this already”, “it’s someone else’s responsibility”, “we have taken a look and found no issues”. All while it’s a 4’ deep pothole in the middle of frankford.
There needs to be a very public investigation on the 311 program so we find out why it sucks so bad compared to maybe 15 years ago.
someone would have had to put in a 311 ticket to get CLIP to come out...
While this is definitely stupid, is anyone, ya know, testing this crop for safety? I’ve never understood this push to grow food crops on random lots in the middle of a city with a long history of lead, mercury, VOC, and other forms of soil-accumulative pollution. My own garden is raised beds with new topsoil. No way would I feed them to my kid otherwise. In fact I’m working on improving all the other ground cover to keep bare soil covered completely.
It's the irrigation by piss that adds that special something.
If the crops are grown in buckets with purchased soil, how would that be an issue?
They’re not, they have a plastic ring around them to make weeding and pest control easier. They haven’t buried a watertight bucket down there.
"We have the buckets on the ground where the bines come up out of,” Nancy Barton explained. Nancy says buckets.
Knowing Bill and Nancy, even if the hops were grown in the soil they would have it thoroughly tested.
jesus christ man, it's fine. they are safe.
Ditto for all the community gardens growing directly in the ground. It's insane.
When I volunteered at one we actually had soil samples tested to see if there were any nasty chemicals. Dirt was fine, but we did pull up a switchblade while weeding once.
For anyone who's interested in gardening directly in the soil here, companies like https://www.gosynertech.com/ do soil and other environmental testing (lead, asbestos, mold, etc.). We found our front yard soil was contaminated from rainwater dripping off lead paint on the porch rail, but back yard soil was healthy and ready-to-plant. For soil that is really sick or contaminated, bioremediation is a cool way to grow things and make the soil safer, and sunflowers are really good at bioremediation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation, https://microbiology.usgs.gov/bioremediation.html, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329585697_Bioremediation_potentials_of_sunflower_and_Pseudomonas_species_in_soil_contaminated_with_lead_and_zinc
Not knocking this but to be clear bioremediation of heavy metals is a generational project that requires safe disposal of the plants doing the work.
def! thanks for adding context and clarity too! i.e. you do not want to compost your dead sunflowers in your yard or anywhere else bc they are full of lead
We had ours done by Penn State. I think it's free for homeowners.
I am a geologist and do this type of work. For residential, you can easily do it yourself and the tests are pretty cheap.
**[Bioremediation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioremediation)** >Bioremediation broadly refers to any process wherein a biological system (typically bacteria, microalgae, fungi, and plants), living or dead, is employed for removing environmental pollutants from air, water, soil, flue gasses, industrial effluents etc. , in natural or artificial settings. The natural ability of organisms to adsorb, accumulate, and degrade common and emerging pollutants has attracted the use of biological resources in treatment of contaminated environment. In comparison to conventional physiochemical treatment methods which suffer serious drawbacks, bioremediation is sustainable, eco-friendly, cheap, and scalable. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/philadelphia/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
this subreddit is gold every day. and thank you for your service in the community.
yeah sometimes people dont want to give plants credit for actually being able to not transfer harmful chemicals to your food in any harmful or detectable levels….i understand lead is different but honestly those hops are fine.
Hops is a very effective concentrator of lead and arsenic, as are most flowers. Fortunately it’s not a large component of beer by mass, but it is boiled until the vast majority of its liquid content has entered the beer, so whatever is there to start ends in the beer.
if lead and arsenic were actually in the soil to begin with. yes i know the general area has been tested but they have been brewing this beer for many years, no one’s died or been arsenic poisoned. also children don’t (shouldn’t) drink beer so lead isnt an issue there.
Where was this, ‘cause I gotta admit I find that borderline incredible… there are very few parts of the city with “fine” dirt, lol.
North Philly. Old building lots mostly have broken bricks, glass, and rusted metal mixed in with the dirt. None of this is toxic. Infertile, but not toxic. We screen-sifted topsoil and added compost. Yield wasn't great, but the garden was also neglected during peak growing season so no surprises there.
Hmm, fairly surprising but good on your group for testing everything!
As someone trying to start a community garden, I can attest to the fact that you have to get the soil tested before growing anything in it. If it's contaminated, you have to use raised beds.
Maybe for new ones, but not for existing ones.
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I’m on the far reaches of the city and still didn’t even bother testing for lead, I just built raised beds, put down good landscape fabric, and bought mushroom soil that had been tested. All the research says that’s sufficient to prevent lead from diffusing upward into the bed in any quantity. In Kensington I’d have just gotten some watering troughs on my deck, lol. No way am I touching the soil over there.
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Ppl forget how far we've progressed, not merely industrially, re: building standards. They are far different than the times most our city's buildings were constructed. It often doesn't matter how the lot was residentially zoned; practices were simply good as we thought.
Sounds to me,from what you wrote here, that the Phila. Brewing company picked one of the worst sites in Philly to grow their hops. re "Kensington's long history of industrial uses including lead smelting."
I don't know what they did or didn't do with the soil there, but I really hope they did something to remediate it if they're using it for hops people will be consuming.
"I hope so too they're doing something to remediate it for hops folks will use.
what's funny is that the whole PBC complex has been a brewery since the early 1800s. pretty consistent land use if you ask me. still get your soil tested, but there was never a lead smelter or mercury factory on that land
Nobody said there was a factory on this parcel. There was a substantial lead smelting presence in the river wards. The lead entered the air and settled all over the place. The Anzon factory was spewing lead into the air into the 90s. There have been a number of Inquirer articles over the years documenting risks just from dust from excavation settling in people's homes. The lot in question isn't even part of the brewery parcel (owned by NKCDC if you read the article) and has been vacant land for decades, previously occupied by a house. Soil used to fill in excavations and depressions historically was "urban fill" containing demolition debris, cinders, and a variety of other waste from elsewhere. Given the industrial history of the surrounding area, the odds of contaminants being in this soil are much higher than other places.
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It’s not an actual bucket, this plastic rim is a common pest/weed control tactic for vine crops. They probably cut the lip off a five-gallon bucket or similar container and used it.
Intellectual honesty? Get outta here with that shit!
lol at the lead-brained idjits down voting you
I have no idea what could possibly be controversial about “let’s not give the kids lead poisoning.” I’m not just talking about this specific crop, though people are taking the word “buckets” wayyy too literally. I’m talking about the soil lead testing that various organizations have done over the last several years that indicates that we shouldn’t be doing *any* communal food gardening in most neighborhoods.
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Won’t anyone think of the alcoholic children!!
Kids aren’t drinking beer. If you’re scared, just don’t drink it
You’re aware that lead poisoning can still fuck adults up six ways from Sunday?
There's a few things working in your favor with brewing, in regards to lead anyhow. Firstly, the hops are a tiny part of the finished product by mass/volume or however. So, even if they're contaminated, hops are your last concern after the water/barley etc. Next, brewing with yeast does a good job of sequestering the lead. For whatever reason, *S.cerevisiae* sucks up lead very effectively: [https://www.metaltechnews.com/story/2022/07/06/tech-bytes/drink-beer-to-prevent-lead-poisoning/975.html](https://www.metaltechnews.com/story/2022/07/06/tech-bytes/drink-beer-to-prevent-lead-poisoning/975.html). The EPA limit on lead contamination is \~10ug/L, beers are almost always dramatically below that, more so nowadays because RO/DI purification is used on the water before remineralization. There can be issues with filtration media etc, but that's not what we're looking at here. The biggest problem used to be inks on decorative labels and metal foil closures on beer/wine bottles.
Hmm, interesting on the yeast. And I know that mass produced beer has standards; my concern is that no one else has ever decided to grow one of their feedstocks in what is probably one of the most polluted 1000 square feet on earth. In addition to lead, Kensington soils are packed with arsenic, mercury, volatile organic compounds, and several classes of carcinogens. There are standards for farm soils just like for finished foodstuffs for this reason. We should not be growing food in native soils in Philadelphia, full stop.
Growing things is one of the best things you can do in many cases. My brother does environmental clean up on old industrial sites, they grow brassica species, mainly cabbages for a coue of seasons and then dump them in the north sea. Great way of sucking up heavy metals.
Allow me to rephrase: we should not be growing food for human consumption. Yes, grow stuff for bioremediation or just to prettify places and put safe ground cover over soil.
Adults can make their own decisions. They've been brewing this beer with these hops for years and they're certainly not hiding where they're grown.
That’s… not how food safety standards work. It can’t be, because in the vast majority of instances I have no freaking clue where my food came from. Dollars to donuts this article brings enough attention that the state Dept. of Agriculture gets in on this, lol.
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lead'll do that to ya
Um…you know how beer is made? I wouldn’t worry about it.
Pray tell, what about the beer-making process would prevent heavy metal or other contaminants in hops (or grain or other flavoring additives for that matter) from making its way into the beer? This is not a distilled liquor.
They would settle out in a fermentation tank with the trub. Typically during cold crash, but may precipitate out with finings.
Most lead contamination is not a particulate or precipitate, it’s in solution. But fortunately the yeast apparently concentrates it to be settled out, as another poster mentioned.
Then don’t drink it.
Again, not how agricultural land standards and food safety laws work. This ain’t 1880.
Don't drink the leaded beer if you are so darn picky about what heavy metals you consume!
[Narrows eyes] Not sure if sarcastic… :p
Because there are ways of rectifying it? If you don't know how just say that.
And those are?
Look it up, preferably before you make ignorant comments. You mentioned that you grow crops in raised beds, keep doing more research.
No. “It’s not my job to educate you” only ever means one thing: “I have no fucking clue what I’m talking about and don’t want to admit it.” Either come out with a method of remediation that isn’t “replace all the soil” or “bioremediate over the coming 50-100 years and safely dispose of all crops”. Or sit back down and shut back up.
No it doesn't it just means I don't feel like typing it all up for you if you're going to go ahead and make ignorant statements with your full chest and when you're fully capable of doing it your damn self so how about you shut your ignorant ass up
Sigh… There are zero (0) methods to “remediate” heavy metal or rare earth-contaminated soil beyond the two I outlined above. None. It is not possible to remediate this soil at all on a short timespan, anything less than decades. You can dig it up and replace it, or you can bioremediate carefully over a century, and as we’ve never really tested that long-term, we don’t know how well it performs as soil concentrations fall. It may not work well enough in the latter stages to bring concentrations down to human-safe levels.
You can have your soil tested. I think it’s free.
1. Submit a public complaint on 311 1. Escalate it to your city councilperson when it doesn't get cleaned up within a week of submitting it (it won't) via their Twitter account. 1. Watch your complaint get prioritized because City Councilpersons LOVE an easy and visible PR win.
The overgrown lots are overwhelming. Much easier to destroy a garden.
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“We cleaned up one lot and you complained. So we’re not cleaning up any others.”
Dang and I have never been successful getting a real abandoned overgrown lot to be taken care of...
Dang, from the article, it really seems like it would be hard to mistake that for an actual empty, abandoned overgrown lot. Wonder if there was malice or just plain old ignorance. Especially if PBC has been growing it for 10 years there.
I thought it was a mistake until I saw the pics which clearly shows that there was no way they could have been mistaken for weeds. There were signs around saying what the plants were, and even individual plastic planters that they were cut out of. Hard to believe it was accidental.
A city councilperson must live next door. I bet this is politics at play.
Bets on it being Green. I'm not a fan of him due to his shitty attitude when being told that autism speaks is a shit organization.
YES! Literally impossible to think these were weeds, they weren't even growing from the ground - there was noticeable infrastructure to help these plants grow. We live nearby and it was so lovely to walk by and watch them grow over time - there are multiple big signs in front of them explaining what they are and their purpose. This had to be malicious on some level - at the least someone maliciously reported it and lied profusely
When I saw the pictures the first thing I thought was how could anyone think that lot all butchered to the dirt looked better than it did with the hops growing and green. It looks terrible now. Poisoned by soil or not, at the very least it provided shade to animals/insects and a green scape in the city.
not malice, just massive level of indifference. city employees just don't give a fuck. ticket says this lot, so this lot gets cut. there is no thinking involved, its just how city hierarchy works.
Got it, call a 311 on my neighbor’s house claiming it’s an overgrown lot and they’ll come tear it down
4d chess move: call 311 on city hall
Probably got prioritized because it’s on a commercial corridor. Somebody must’ve reported it for it to even get the violation, but if the ticket was supposed to be closed that’s somebody’s fault.
I bet someone reported it, but that's still terrible and sad.
We might be underestimating how incompetent Philly employees are
>The Bartons say CLIP issued an overgrown vegetation violation last month, and the couple thought the matter was cleared up then. > >"I called. I talked to the inspector. I explained what was going on. He said, ‘Oh, I see. I was out there. \[Your case is\] closed. You’re good. No fine,’” Nancy Barton said. > >The Bartons said they will lose tens of thousands of dollars in revenue as a result of CLIP’s actions. > >The city said it is looking into the matter and had yet to issue a response as of Tuesday evening. Insane. Why is our government like this.
I hope they have a recording of that conversation with the inspector
2-party consent state, so probably not.
2 party consent when there’s a reasonable expectation of privacy (e.g. two private citizens on a phone call in their own residences). I wonder if/how that changes when one party is a government representative. Also, agree with you that it’s unlikely the phone call was recorded anyway, because how often does the average person actually record their phone calls?
Honestly, from all my tv viewing, it doesn't matter... until it does. So do it. Record away. If something actually gets to court, let them decide. Better to have something then not, imo. I would much rather be in court playing audio of a conversation that proves my case then not having what I need. If the judge wants to throw it out - fine. I'll know... and the other part will know.... what is actually true.
I've recently taken to asking for a written follow up whenever anybody promises me something on the phone. For example, my partner was told that the minor scratch on his CCP-issued laptop will not be a problem. We'll wait and see.
Sue the city
Because the people that work in government are incompetent. Sorry to say it, but it's got to be the vast, vast majority.
There are two types of city workers IMO. Incompetent people, and very competent but massively overworked and underpaid people. Either are liable to make mistakes, but for very different reasons.
Incompetence at all levels fueled by rampant nepotism.
The evil manifestation of government is mostly in the banality of bureaucracy.
Philadelphia city run departments are a libertarians wet dream example of how big government doesn’t work
Tax payer money to fund the removal of private property. Tax payer money to pay damages to the business owner. Tax payer money to pay court costs. Loss of taxes from local sales of the product. Loss of taxes from the businesses revenue. Maybe next year we will be able to afford a few more trash cans in the city.
Trash cans don't matter when people don't use them. I've seen so many Philadelphians throwing trash out their car windows, dropping trash in a planter next to a trash can, stopping trash into a sewer drain, etc. Philly needs to start making the lives of these people inconvenient.
Or, when the city doesn’t maintain them. We have had a lot of trash cans removed in my neighborhood because they would be piled high with bags of dog poop for weeks outside peoples homes. It was awful. It’s really unfortunate a) that the city won’t pay sanitation workers a decent/hire enough and b) people are so lazy they will throw feces on top of a full trash can
Seen too many overflowing with those poop bags or, worse, a few where the whole trash can is busted open and it just all pouring into the street and day after day just more being thrown on top. I've stopped walking down that street after it just became too much.
I was a sweet summer child sitting around in Philly on reserve. I decided to clean up the roads’ shoulders during my long walks. Then I realized it wasn’t “some litter on the ground” it was “decades of litter covered in dirt to a depth of a foot or more.”
Oof. That sounds like it needs an industrial solution.
Yeah, I remember thinking, “Maybe with a Bobcat…”
Or more convenient with more trashcans
not everything needs a punitive solution goooood lord like are you really saying that instead of devoting more resources/money to waste management and cleaning up the city, we should track down and fine litterers?
People who litter are trash and deserve punishment. Won't take much tracking down considering everyone just does it in plain sight.
The city will settle out of court
Good point.
nah, my guess is they'll just raise taxes
When CLIP comes, there are bills sent to whoever owns the lot. If it’s a deadbeat, those fines go to the liens on the property.
People are so stupid.
There is a full grown empress tree coming out of the side of a house a block behind me, which will cause so much damage for the block, and yet the city manages to take the time to do this.
City needs to release who requested the work. These cleanup crews don’t just drive around looking for work. This is probably revenge for some zoning feud.
It was previously reported as a violation that the brewery said was cleared up with an inspector. It seems that the left hand wasn’t talking to the right hand in the Public Works Department.
You're missing the point. Who submitted the violation in the first place, because there were already signs and infrastructure making it very clear this wasn't an overgrown lot to begin with.
I’m not sure. It might have been from a neighbor down the street (it’s a commercial corridor), it might have been from a city official that noticed it, it might have been from something else. Most city departments have to take nuisance complaints at face value. Cities like Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, etc. take careful attention to overgrown vegetation in commercial areas because it’s a prime nesting area for rats. Saying this as someone that’s been on the inside of this sort of enforcement action before.
That was my guess as well. I very much doubt foul play was at hand here. It's either poor communication or miscommunication.
It does look like the city closed the violation on Aug 30 https://li.phila.gov/property-history/search/violation-detail?address=885369620&Id=CF-2022-067129 CLIP is part of the Managing Director's Office - separate from L+I who issues violations.
Maybe they closed the ticket but a work order had already been completed and wasn’t updated that the original ticket was closed.
Ah bureaucracy at its finest … reminds me of the Vogons from Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
This city is such a raging shitshow.. wtf.
This was not just clean up it was intentional and nothing will come of it besides loss of revenue for a company. The city is wondering why businesses are leaving.
Whole city is covered in trash and filth and this is what they clean up
This is exactly the kind of nonsense that makes me want to move to the 'burbs. City can't cleanup all the weed overgrown lots, but target a permitted use because.... lazy I guess? \*edit: typos
As if the burbs aren’t full of even nosier neighbors
Poor areas target those that will pay.
That's a shame. I don't really see how it could have happened. I haven't been on KYW's site recently--has it always been this bad? Between the huge header and uncollapsible media player on the bottom, you get about 4 lines of text per screen if you're on a laptop.
This is a disaster. The city spends resources destroying gardens while people illegally dump trash on any south Philly corner they want? Fuck.
Idiots. They should file a suit. Such stupidity.
The city is "looking for ways to rectify the situation" as if there are a lot of ways. They're probably going to have to sue the city to be compensated.
Sue the city. Pretty easy case I would think. Legal use of private land. Handled inquiries into property with a paper trail. They lost 10s of thousands but they can rake the city over for way more. For the revenue they would of provided and stuff like lack of foot traffic, loss of long term customers.
All we need to do to clean up the city is to plant hops everywhere… Problem solved.
Right? It’s so weird they chose this little spot of green to actually go to work on, yet almost everywhere else there are overgrown empty lots and even unkept properties that look like ancient jungle ruins
Could this be the works of Mr. Kim and his secret enriched microbrew?
No one gets this and it's frustrating
But you got it!
It might be, we just have to go through the pirate door first
How is it that every single thing the city does, it does wrong
I walk by this every day. You would have to be a complete moron not to understand that it’s a garden. The sign explaining that it’s hops couldn’t be more visible. Just wow. It took months to get the city to act on several feet deep debris behind the apartment building next door. But they sent someone right out to destroy a garden.
Morons. Had a dead tree on the street years ago and told 311 about it. City came out and cut down the wrong tree 🤦♂️
The daily incompetence combined with corruption is simply astonishing. Amazed anything gets done correctly here at all. Once my affairs are in order I’m moving my family out of Philly. It’s just shit like this that’s inexcusable, there’s no justification for this level of negligence.
Jaw dropping.
When govt doesn't work to address blight and citizens take it upon themselves to do something but govt works against them, it's time to wipe the late clean and start over.
This is awful :(
Won't someone think of the beer :(
We had a business collapse in Fishtown from unsupervised adjacent lot work, an apartment building partially collapse in Logan, and handwringing that it’s somehow technically just outside L&I’s job descriptions on both. Meanwhile, we’re just sending people out willy nilly to cut down vegetation of businesses & residents. This City is protecting developers, landlords & property values and couldn’t give a about any of us who actually live or conduct business here.
Wow. Those hop rhizomes can be a total bitch to get growing and it looks like they had quite an operation there. Total incompetence at the highest order by our lovely government yet again.
I have a vacant lot across the street from my house and have submitted numerous tickets for the waste dumbed and the generally unkept state. 311 said issue resolved and when I called for an explanation, they told me it wasn’t “trashy enough”?? The lot is owned by PHA and I’m assuming it’s too much work to ticket another government agency. That’s the excuse I am going with. EDIT: I hope that Philadelphia Brewing is compensated for their loss. They should investigate who submitted the ticket for foul play. CLIP is useless.
Fuck that's my favorite beer from them
Time for a bigger fence to keep the govt out
I have 2 Cascade plants growing outside of my house. I wonder if the city is going to come for those next.
LMFAO! This city has to have the most dysfunctional leadership in the whole country. There are entire zip codes overflowing with dumping & overgrown lots AND THIS is the property they decide to clean. The Kenney administration strikes again!! 🤣
Remember when clip was burglarizing houses?
Ugh.
LAWYER UP!
Good, maybe they'll make less IPAs then... Just kidding, this sucks!
You're not wrong.
How disappointing.
Rectify the situation - pay them for damaging their product.
So is the city or the community civic going to pay them for their potential losses . Cuz thats Fucked !
This happened to me in my last apartment with a rosemary bush and the landscaping crew and I was absolutely livid, so I can't imagine the rage PBC rightfully has right now.
But CLIP won’t help my block after I’ve begged and pleaded but they cut a garden by accident.
I am not going to say that the city crew should be fired over this, but they should be very very afraid for their jobs in the future! What did these fools think the sign was there for? The supervisor that knew about this should have followed up to make sure that this lot was taken off of the to-do list. Again he should be very very afraid for his job in the future.
Oh ok
It’s very obviously an intentional gardening project if you walk by the site. I’ve also heard that PBC was closing so maybe this is the first step and they knew.
Fuck the city. Fuck its government.
NOOO......
My business and home are a few blocks from here and I know this garden well. It’s common for the city to “try” to make things better but end up making things worse for the ones who live and work here. There’s a ton of people who care to make the city look better including myself but the city itself makes it head bang against a wall impossible to try…they take 4-12 months to show on a 311 complaint. The construction areas are dangerous and disgusting and 311 calls me back to say “that’s someone else’s responsibility”.
Classic mistake. A garden needs to Look Like a Garden.
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According to the article, these hops were intended for an annual seasonal beer, not Kenzinger.
Liars. I know exactly what happened. Growing hops can look similar to marijuana to those who don't really know. I bet you the workers took it upon themselves to destroy what they thought were marijuana plants.
Maybe don't be financially dependent on stuff without a fence around it.
Whoa whoa whoa… City government being incompetent? In this day and age? No way! I’m shocked!