A new restoration project is underway to get Jenkintown Creek in Cheltenham Township to flow more easily, writes Catalina Jaramillo for WHYY.

The creek trickles into a concrete pipe. The restoration will remove 235 linear feet of concrete to let the creek flow freely through a bank surrounded by bushes and trees.

“Instead of the channel being straight, as is in its current condition, it’s going to flow through and zigzag across this one acre of landscape, said Susan Harris, a project manager with the Tookany/Tacony-Frankford Watershed Partnership, providing “opportunity for sediment to drop out of the water.”

Water in the creek comes mostly from rain running off 42 acres upstream in Montgomery County, including roads, 144 small-lot residential properties, six condominium complexes, and commercial properties.

Stormwater catches everything on the surface and those pollutants go straight downstream to Philadelphia and eventually into the Delaware River.

With the restoration, plants, stones, and soil will filter the water and absorb some of it.

That should mean less volume in Philadelphia’s combined sewer system, and less chance of bank erosion, flash flooding and a raw sewage overflow in neighborhoods farther down.

The restoration will be completed by January.

Read more about the Jenkintown Creek restoration here.

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