Delaware lawmakers moved to protect the state's freshwater wetlands following the Supreme Court decision that removed them from the jurisdiction of the federal Clean Water Act. In our weekly series with the Bay Journal Delmarva Public Media's Don Rush talks with reporter Jeremy Cox about the significance of the legislation.
Three years after the U.S. Supreme Court stripped federal protections from millions of acres of wetlands, Delaware has stepped in to shield its own vulnerable ecosystems.
Delaware Lawmakers recently passed the Wetland Stewardship Act, a major environmental milestone aimed at regulating development in the state's non-tidal, freshwater wetlands.
While Delaware has regulated tidal wetlands since the 1970s, inland freshwater areas were historically left to federal oversight under the Clean Water Act. Recent federal rollbacks and a landmark Supreme Court ruling changed everything. The court decreed that a waterway must have a continuous surface connection to navigable waters to receive federal protection.
"That strips out a lot of waterways that have maybe a groundwater connection or maybe they're ephemeral in nature," Bay Journal reporter Jeremy Cox explained. "They're wet sometimes of the year and dry in others."
The impact on the nation's second-smallest state was immediate and severe. Delaware saw its protected freshwater wetlands slashed by half, plummeting from 150,000 acres down to just 75,000 acres.
These ecosystems are critical to the region's environmental health. Beyond serving as nurseries for local wildlife, they play a vital role in flood prevention. Freshwater wetlands are "important for storing and filtering rainwater from places that we don't want to get wet," Cox noted.
Delaware Senator Stephanie Hansen successfully championed the new law after a previous attempt in 2024 failed. By hosting workshops to "hash things out ahead of time" with various interest groups and stakeholders, Hansen built the consensus needed to push the protection act across the finish line.
