Photo courtesy of Bruce Emmerling via Wikimedia Commons. The Trinseo Altuglas plant leaked latex emulsion chemicals into the Delaware River on March 24, leading to the temporary closure of one of Philadelphia's two drinking water treatment plants. The spill led to a bottled water shortage in the city.
By Lily Benn ’24
Staff Writer
On March 24, a latex emulsion chemical spill from a Trinseo Altuglas plant in Bristol, Pennsylvania, caused panic over the safety of drinking water in Philadelphia, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.
As of March 28, the water in Philadelphia is confirmed safe to drink. However, the previous Sunday morning, the city of Philadelphia’s officials issued a tap water advisory. This caused many residents of Philadelphia and the surrounding areas to rush to grocery stores to stock up on bottled water to avoid drinking contaminated water, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
According to Plastics Today, approximately eight thousand gallons of the acrylic polymer overflowed the onsite containment system and entered a storm drain. From this drain, the chemicals flowed into Otter Creek, a tributary that flows into the Delaware River. Philadelphia’s water sources come from the Delaware River and the Schuylkill River. There is only one public treatment plant regulating public city water from the Delaware River, the Baxter Water Treatment Plant, an article from WHYY-FM explained.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, as of 2023, there is little research on the effects of ingesting or coming into contact with the three main chemicals released in the spill: ethyl acrylate, methyl methacrylate and butyl acrylate. There is some evidence of adverse health effects for all three chemicals, but there is little knowledge of their long-term effects.
This is not the first time Trinseo has had chemical spills, The Philadelphia Inquirer explained. In fact, there have been four documented cases of latex chemical leaks in this area since 2010 under the ownership of the European company Arkema. During this time, the Environmental Protection Agency released a corrective action plan for the Trinseo chemical plant after discovering that groundwater was “contaminated with a variety of organic and inorganic chemicals,” per the Philadelphia Inquirer.
The Baxter Water Treatment Plant supplies water to half of the city of 1.5 million people, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. It was closed as soon as city officials learned of the chemical spill, but on the following Sunday, the plant was forced to reopen to maintain regulated water levels, with city officials issuing the aforementioned tap water advisory. This advisory was revoked the following Tuesday following hydraulic modeling and water sampling showing that the threat of contamination had passed, WHYY-FM reported.
During this period of uncertainty over the safety of half of Philadelphia’s tap water, the city was not able to divert safe water to these residents, WHYY-FM explained. In city infrastructure, redundancy is the ability to supply safe water in times of crisis via backup systems to all residents of an urban area. It is difficult for most areas to obtain 100 percent redundancy, mainly due to infrastructure problems, especially in Philadelphia. According to Charles Haas, a professor of environmental engineering at Drexel University, supplying water to all of Philadelphia’s residents from the plants currently in use on the Schuylkill River would require hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the plants or create new plants entirely, as the ones in place do not have the infrastructure to be able to supply water to more people in case of emergencies, or generally.
Despite how difficult it is to plan and carry out full redundancy, according to Philadelphia’s water revitalization plan, the city is planning to improve its water infrastructure over the next 25 years. This plan lays out goals and key projects dedicated to improving the quality of water for Philadelphian citizens. About 400 total projects are in line according to this plan, with the first one scheduled to start in 2026, constructing a connection between the two plants on the Schuylkill River, costing about 2.5 billion dollars.
Trinseo put out a press release on March 26, explaining that Altuglas LLC employees are working with local, state and federal agencies on stopping the spill and cleaning it up. There was no information in this release on how or if the company is working to prevent these spills in the future.