For Earth Day, Delaware Currents launches another one of its ambitious projects. This story kicks off a 10-part series to help you understand the health of the nine basins in Pennsylvania that are part of the Delaware River’s watershed. The findings are drawn from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection’s 2022 Integrated Water Quality Report. At Delaware Currents, we promote our coverage of the Delaware River and watershed with the slogan “Every mile a story.” And what we’ve discovered in a deep-dive analysis of the DEP report amounts to nearly 5,000 stories of pollution and contamination – bureaucratically known as “impairments” – in the basins in Pennsylvania that are part of the larger Delaware River watershed. In this series, we’ll explain in plain terms what the report says about the conditions of the streams in your backyards, from Wayne and Pike Counties in the upper regions of the watershed, to Schuylkill and Bucks Counties farther south. Coming stories will focus on the conditions of and threats to the Upper Delaware, Lackawaxen, Middle Delaware, Middle Delaware-Musconetcong, Lehigh, Crosswicks-Neshaminy, Lower Delaware, Schuylkill and Brandywine-Christina basins. The articles are the results of more than three dozen interviews with activists, advocates, academics and experts, five field trips and months of reporting to render more accessible what is a firehose of information and data in the DEP report. The aim of Delaware Currents is to educate and inform and to help host a conversation about the sometimes competing demands and needs of the Delaware. We believe we are better custodians of the river when we understand the river. With that in mind, we welcome your feedback and suggestions about this series and our coverage in general. Write us at delawarecurrents@gmail.com Thanks for reading, Meg McGuire, publisher, Delaware Currents