Drain Buddies logo. (Pulled from Drain Buddies website.)
Last August, lifelong resident Kadafi El-Kardah sought to launch a program designed to connect neighbors as they monitor, clean, and report local stormwater drains. This month, Drain Buddies! is no longer conceptual, but a full-on reality.
“It’s been a long process with this… I’ve been planning for a year now. So now I get to officially see all my planning, you know, be implemented,” said El-Kardah, revisiting his Knight Emerging City Champions (KECC) project.
KECC is a fellowship and micro-grant program for young civic innovators with bold ideas to transform their communities. El-Kardah, also a Citizen Planner, sought to combat storm drain contamination, which overall affects our neighborhood’s waterways.
Helping to bring the concept to life is the website, which launched this week. There, folks can learn more about the project, connect to environmental city resources, and follow the ongoing impact of the program.
Most importantly, it’s where, this Friday, Germantown neighbors can begin the adoption process for their drain of choice, with over 2,000 available and the option to “add a drain” if one isn’t available.
Only Germantown boundaries are included in this project, including all 19144 streets and East Germantown’s 19138 streets. In the east, the map goes up as far as Stenton Ave. and down south to Wister St. There’s a drain on every block.
“You don’t have to go far,” El-Kardah said, emphasizing accessibility.
Every adopter will receive a kit containing cleaning supplies like a dustpan, hand broom, trash bags, gloves, and other items. The first pick-up event will happen sometime in August, El-Kardah told GIH.
The kits come as the only change to the plans presented last year. Originally, El-Kardah envisioned a tool library, but says that with a tool library opening in Mt. Airy and his own inability to secure a location, he pivoted.
Incentives are another planned part of the project that El-Kardah is still working to secure. His hopes are to provide gift cards to local businesses during raffles and the like. However, he plans to do branded bottles and merch for folks who hit milestones or adopt multiple drains.
For El-Kardah, this project also wouldn’t have come to fruition without community support, as whole cities and municipalities manage most drain adoption programs.
He convened neighbors to create an advisory team with environmental and neighborhood expertise to help shape the approach. A point he says was raised by the advisory team is youth engagement, which he says he’s still thinking about.
“This program, it really taught me that I need community feedback in order to make a reality,” El-Kardah said. “You can’t do it alone.”
Sumi Narra of the Advisory Team, also a Tree Tender and Friend of Fernhill Park, has a positive view of the program, calling it a “great addition” to the neighborhood.
She praised the program for its low-lift participation measures, saying, “It’s just asking a Drain Buddy to say, ‘Hey, can you check on the drain and keep an eye on it?’ And it might be twice a month — it might be a little bit more — but it’s not like a huge commitment.”
She continued: “I think that we just need to kind of look at ways to give people the power and do things in small ways. And that’s exactly what Drain Buddies is.”
When asked what he’s most looking forward to, El-Kardah said, “Just finally getting the ball rolling with this. It’s been a long time coming.”
Neighbors interested in adopting a drain can do so this Friday, July 17, by visiting drainbuddiesphl.com.
Rasheed Z. Ajamu is a Germantown-born and raised Black journalist, reporting from a place-based lens to see how things affect life in Germantown. They strive to preserve the stories of Black natives in an ever-changing Philadelphia and Germantown social landscape.