About RCSI

The Resilient Communities Stormwater Initiative, funded by the William Penn Foundation, seeks to manage stormwater and advance other community goals in historically underserved neighborhoods using an approach known as green stormwater infrastructure – or GSI.  When thoughtfully designed, GSI can reduce flooding and pollution caused by stormwater runoff, increase neighborhood green space, and contribute other climate-resilient community benefits. With an initial focus on North, West, and Southwest Philadelphia, the Initiative will engage residents to identify green infrastructure and other climate-resilient projects for their communities. Through this process, a large-scale, integrated demonstration project will be implemented over several blocks in one neighborhood. The goal is that this demonstration will provide a replicable model for future GSI investments in other neighborhoods.

The project will begin publicly in Spring 2022 with a series of community roundtables in select neighborhoods. The Initiative will contract with community-based organizations to support the roundtables and help secure meeting locations, provide refreshments and recruit community participants, each of whom will be paid for their participation.

The Initiative is led by six organizational partners:

The Nature Conservancy will lead the GSI capital projects pre-development work and explore opportunities to support community interests and related complementary greening efforts. 

Greenprint Partners will pursue complementary capital project development opportunities aligned with geographic priorities and lead specialized health research and outreach to health funders.

PEER Environmental will lead an investigation into new funding mechanisms and specialized project pre-development work around commercial shopping centers and vacant lands.   

The Clean Water Fund will lead community outreach organizing and related advocacy to help determine receptivity to GSI and support policy solutions for related to community needs. 

The Academy of Natural Sciences will support project planning and design and function as the research and data lead: assembling inputs from all partners, updating prioritization tools, and supporting community engagement and data collection. 

The Sustainable Water Resource Engineering Lab at Drexel University will provide technical support regarding GSI feasibility, community co-benefits, and coordination with other resilience planning efforts in the select neighborhoods.  

RSCI Initiatives