A Million Stories

by Jeffrey C. Billman and Julia Harte

Do you remember the absolute panic everyone felt right after Sept. 11? Of course you do. You said you'd never forget: Buildings on lockdown! Brown people dispatched to clandestine locations! Waterboarding! Hair-gel-free airplanes! This was war, people — WAR — and no matter the cost to our freedom or common sense, we had to protect ourselves, whatever it took.

Eight short years later, the Philadelphia Water Department has caught the 9/11 bug, and now wants to spend $10 million to, you know, keep the terrorists from winning.

To understand how we got here, we must first journey back to the Year of our Lord 2002, back before Tom Ridge beseeched us to stock up on duct tape or Dick Cheney shot that poor, old man in the face. That year, the U.S. Congress passed a law instructing water departments to assess their vulnerability to terrorist attacks. 

In 2007 — and hey, what's the rush? — the PWD tested its three drinking-water facilities and decided to boost security around each, because apparently we've all been in danger of having our tap water laced with cyanide. Except that we haven't. Maybe.

PWD watersheds program manager Joanne Dahme wouldn't tell us what the threat-assessment report said or what safety-enhancing steps Massachusetts-based consulting firm AECOM suggested, but she did say that there's no immediate danger prompting the renovations.

But they're going to do them anyway, because, why not? The consultants have been paid, and the bureaucratic inertia is full-steam-ahead. Over near the department's Queen Lane facility in East Falls, however, this thing is going over like a lead balloon. On the slope in between the facility's northern chain-link fence and Queen Lane — and from there, the affluent houses on the other side — is about 40 yards of grass that nearby residents use as a gathering area and de facto dog park. The PWD wants all that to end; instead, it wants to build a second fence 75 feet from the current one and install a slew of lights and security cameras, at a cost of $1.5 million, at some point over the next year.

In the last month, some 30 locals have signed a petition asking the water department to reconsider. "We all moved here because we liked the looks of the area," says Sheldon Wolfe , who has been gathering the petitions. "We had a nice park across the street, and here they go wanting to close it off and have these bright lights banging down on us ."

He's proposed alternatives, like making the existing fence higher, to no avail. Dahme says the consultant suggested a " double-ring of defense " so that's that.

Dahme, for her part, doesn't know anything about any dissatisfaction with the PWD's plans: "I think everyone's cool with the fence, and understands why it's required."

Oh, hey Joanne, while we've got you on the line, mind if we ask why it took you guys five years to address this urgent security threat ?

The department was "looking for consultants. It takes some time." Oh, hey Joanne, while we've got you on the line, mind if we ask why it took you guys five years to address this urgent security threat? The department was "looking for consultants. It takes some time."

You know what's funny about that skinhead rally we told you about a few weeks ago ("Kinder, Gentler Skinheads," Oct. 15)? Nothing. Except that Keystone United, the white nationalist group sponsoring the Leif Erikson Day celebration, never bothered to get a permit, which city law seems to require. And the city could care less.

Section 2 of the city's permit policy spells out the requirements: "No person or entity shall conduct or hold a demonstration on city property without first obtaining a permit from the city." The city defines "demonstrations" as having 75 or more people. This one was right on the cusp: We guessed 70. At last year's rally — no permit for that one, either — the Daily News reported 75. Also, the rally took place near Boathouse Row the same day, Oct. 10, as the Navy Day Regatta , which would appear to contradict the city's stricture that such demonstrations not interfere with regularly scheduled events . And even if KU didn't reach the magic number, 75, the law also specifies that any gathering that blocks traffic needs a permit, too, and indeed, the skinheads blocked East Park Lane for a good five minutes.

So they needed a permit, and didn't get one. What gives? One self-described "anti-racist" organizer — who asked to remain anonymous because she's afraid of skinhead retaliation — spent weeks before the rally trying to get local officials to shut this thing down, without any luck. Everyone she contacted, the organizer says, passed responsibility off elsewhere.

At the end of the day, the buck stops with the police department's civil affairs unit: "You didn't see anyone getting killed , did you?" asks Capt. Bill Fisher. "Then we did our job."

Such standards! What really made it OK, Fisher says, is that KU leader Keith Carney called him and told him about the march beforehand, which is basically the same as paying $20 for a city permit.