Lauren Yates

May 29, 2024 | delawarecurrents.org | Lauren Yates

Public water providers in the Delaware River watershed and across the United States are being urged to ramp up their cybersecurity as critical infrastructure faces increasing threats from cyberattacks. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency last week issued an enforcement alert that said that more than 70 percent of public water systems inspected since September 2023 violated Safe Drinking Water Act requirements, with many showing “alarming” gaps in cybersecurity.

Mar 11, 2024 | delawarecurrents.org | Lauren Yates

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is expected this fall to roll out new rules requiring the removal of lead water pipelines, ushering in the first nationwide effort to replace millions of pieces of infrastructure that can have harmful health effects but that also raises questions of how to pay for the $625 billion in needed improvements. As lead pipes corrode, they can leach lead particles into running water that you could eventually end up drinking.

Feb 19, 2024 | delawarecurrents.org | Lauren Yates

On a spring day more than 300 years ago, the people of the Lenape tribe gathered in their homeland along the Brandywine Creek in Delaware. Hundreds of fish had just begun to make their way from the Atlantic Ocean, up the Delaware River and into the Brandywine to spawn in the creek’s upstream headwaters in Pennsylvania. After a long, lean winter for the Lenape, these fish — now known as the American Shad — were greeted as relatives and the first source of fresh food for the Lenapes every year.

Feb 17, 2024 | delawarecurrents.org | Chris Mele |Lauren Yates |Meg McGuire

The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection has awarded more than $573,000 to 10 projects to protect and restore the Delaware Estuary coastal zone, a 112-mile area in Bucks, Delaware and Philadelphia Counties that includes islands, marshes and other areas in the watershed.

Feb 12, 2024 | delawarecurrents.org | Lauren Yates

Researchers in the Delaware River watershed are gearing up to study what they consider an emerging water pollutant of concern: the flecks of rubber and dust that flake from worn car tires. Scientists have long known that the flecks themselves, called tire wear particles, are one of the most prevalent microplastics in the ocean — one recent estimate from the Pew Charitable Trust said that tire particles make up around 78 percent of microplastic mass in the planet’s oceans.