Society Hill view from Society  Hill  Tower  Photo by, Kimberly Payton  WHYY

Jake Blumgart and Jim Saksa report for WHYY News:

Harry Schwartz, 84, remembers when his neighborhood, Society Hill, was one of the poorest parts of Philadelphia. But by the time he moved there as a young lawyer in 1969, things had changed. City planners had fixed up crowded blocks of crumbling old houses and razed a congested, old wholesale produce market to make way for majestic modernist towers. Schwartz and his pediatrician wife were attracted to Society Hill’s architectural gems, tucked among its cobblestoned, walkable streets. Soon, they found themselves surrounded by a community of artists, activists, and young professionals like them.
They loved
it. Society Hill allowed them to bike to work and walk to friends’ houses for
Julia Child-inspired dinner parties. Today, Schwartz lives in an airy, sun-lit
condo in the soaring towers that replaced the old Dock Street Market. His
living room windows overlook some of the city’s most coveted addresses.Philadelphia’s Dock Street Market in 1928. Photo: Philadelphia Evening BulletinThe
reinvention of Society Hill in the 1960s is widely considered one of the first
instances of gentrification — although no one called it that at the time. The
term was coined in 1964 by a British sociologist to describe the nascent
phenomena of the middle-and-upper-class moving into the meaner parts of London.
Since then, the term has only become more fraught, hard to precisely define,
and often racially loaded. No one wants to identify themselves as a gentrifier,
not even a half-century later.Read the full storyLike this? Use form in upper right to receive free updates
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Dismissals, appeals and plenty of dense procedure define first 18 months of lawsuits filed over widespread drinking water contamination along the counties’ border.



Kyle Bagenstose reports for the Bucks County Courier Post:

Eighteen months after a slew of lawsuits were filed over drinking water contamination in Bucks and Montgomery counties, the cases still are in limbo in county and federal courts.


The suits represent more than a thousand area residents who were presumably exposed to unregulated perfluorinated chemicals in their drinking water, which are believed to have originated from firefighting foam used at military bases near the counties’ shared border. The suits seek myriad remedies, including blood testing, health screenings, and monetary damages related to health conditions, property values and other related costs.


“We’re still in the infancy,” said Donald Soutar, an associate attorney of New York City law firm Weitz & Luxenberg and lead counsel of the largest area lawsuit. “It’s fair to say (it’ll be) a matter of years.”


In total, eight significant lawsuits have been filed on behalf of residents affected by the contamination since 2016, although several have since been consolidated. Soutar, whose firm is associated with consumer advocate Erin Brockovich, is lead counsel on a consolidated class-action lawsuit, joined by attorneys from Creedon & Feliciani of Norristown, as well as attorneys from three Philadelphia-based firms: Anapol Weiss, Levin Sedran & Berman and Napoli Shkolnik.


More than a thousand residents have signed on to the suit, filed in September 2016, Soutar said. However, if successful, its class-action status means that any of the tens of thousands of residents meeting certain criteria for their exposure to the chemicals would be eligible for awards, including a medical monitoring program to screen for potential illnesses, a blood testing program and certain monetary damages.


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