Wilmington is just finishing up pumping $7 million into the raceways that line the Brandywine River — a beautiful waterway its residents can see but not touch.

With bacterial content flowing downstream from Chester County that makes the Brandywine River unsafe for swimming and drinking, the investment poses the question of what’s being done to improve water quality upstream.

“Our biggest concern is upriver what’s happening. We don’t control what happens in Pennsylvania,” Wilmington Public Works Commissioner Jeff Starkey said in a Delaware Online report by Adam Duvernay.

“Any development that is sending stuff into the river, we have to treat that water in order to drink it. Any development in Pennsylvania is out of our control, and farms, things of that nature, sending runoff into the river.”

The nonprofit advocate Partnership for the Delaware Estuary advances that agenda of better stewardship with Brandywine River educational outreach and federal grant requests for projects that leak into three states, but more needs to be done to arrest the costly cleanup and allow more enjoyment of the river.

Read the rest of the story on Delaware Online here, and check out previous VISTA Today coverage of happenings along the Brandywine River here.

How Wilmington’s Public Works Department converts water from the Brandywine River into drinking water for its 71,000 residents: