Delaware Currents

As Delaware Currents prepares to shut down, many of us who work in and care for the Delaware River Watershed feel the loss personally. For years, editor Meg McGuire and her team offered something rare: journalism that listened to the river, explained its science, held institutions accountable, and connected people to the water that sustains them. DC’s departure is more than the end of a publication: It is a warning.

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I’m two blocks from the mouth of the Assunpink Creek. It has made it under Route 1, flowed through the historic Mill Hill neighborhood, and has just emerged from the Broad Street bridge. As I stand on the patio of the Department of Health and Human Services, I see it glinting toward me. Five years ago, this 500-foot portion of the creek had been underground. It had been sent there because state workers in the 1970s had needed a place to park their cars. The creek had been in the way.

After 10-plus years, the online, non-profit news outlet Delaware Currents is shutting down. Focused on news related to the Delaware River watershed, the 330-mile river and its people, the site worked to educate readers about a wide range of subjects. The website is expected to stay up for another year or so, but new content is not expected to be added after the new year begins. Here is the BRC News 13 report from Preston Ehrler:

As communities grapple with decades of toxic pollution from “forever chemicals,” a group of governors are pushing for federal action on another widespread and unregulated contaminant: microplastics. The day before Thanksgiving, governors from seven states, including Delaware and New Jersey, announced they were petitioning the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to start addressing nationwide microplastics contamination.

The Atlantic shad looks unremarkable, much like a kid’s drawing of a fish: shiny silver coat, fins, forked tail. But it is the source of many anglers’ fascination. To know that feeling, read John McPhee, in his “The Founding Fish” (2002), which is all about shad. Here, he writes about their soul-stirring migration from the Atlantic up the Delaware: “When it warms past forty Fahrenheit, they (the shad) begin their migration, in pulses, pods —males (for the most part) first.

Speakers at a hearing on Wednesday warned of lasting environmental and health harms that would come with siting a liquefied natural gas plant in Chester, Pa., or other nearby densely populated communities in southeastern Delaware County. The hearing, organized by Democrats on Pennsylvania’s House Environmental and Natural Resource Protection Committee, was in response to a plan that has been years in the making to build an LNG export terminal in Chester or nearby locations on the Delaware River.

An environmental group has gone to federal court to block a permit extension granted to the developers of a controversial port on the Delaware River in Gibbstown, N.J., that would serve as an export site for liquified natural gas. The group, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network, brought the legal challenge in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey last month against the Delaware River Basin Commission.

Not everyone reads every single one of my newsletters, so you might have missed that Delaware Currents is coming to an end, officially on Dec. 31, 2025. Here’s a link to that newsletter. We’ll still be reporting and writing until then, though slowing down. Because that newsletter was really important to me, I watched in real time as it went out. I wondered what the reaction might be, if any.

Recent volunteer cleanups at three sites in the Delaware River Basin organized by an environmental group not only collected 900 pounds of trash but also gained key detailed data to help better define what is polluting coasts and beaches, the group said. The group, the Surfrider Foundation, organized a “Cleanup Crawl” event at three locations — Petty’s Island, N.J., Newark, Del., and Dewey Beach, Del. — over a weekend last month.