It’s also good news for residents, he said. More than half of the city’s drinking water comes from upriver of where these water filtering mussels were found.

Riverfront North hopes to continue mussel surveys and encourage the community to get involved.

“You should care about the water that you’re consuming and using for recreation,” McWilliams said. “Once we educate the community about why it’s important to protect the watershed, that’s almost synonymous with [them] saying, ‘I want to conserve and protect my community.’ And that’s what we’re trying to promote.”

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

Candidates for the First State’s lone Congressional seat gave their views on foreign and domestic policy at a forum in downtown Wilmington Tuesday.

State Sen. Sarah McBride, businessman Earl Cooper and financier Elias Weir are vying for the Democratic nomination in the September 10 primary. Small businesswoman and veteran Donyale Hall and John J. Whalen III are competing for the Republican nomination. The seat is being vacated by Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rochester, who is campaigning to replace Sen. Tom Carper, who is not running for re-election.

All the candidates except Whalen participated in the debate, which discussed issues including abortion, immigration, the Gaza war and the U.S. relationship with Russia and China.

The contenders all agreed with supporting Israel in its war in Gaza. McBride said the loss of life was heartbreaking.

“That’s one of the reasons why I’ve been so supportive of the U.S. government’s led efforts to negotiate a long-term cease-fire that secures the release of the hostages and builds a bridge toward a lasting peace and a sustainable peace,” she said. “We have to be clear that while that deal is currently on the table, Israel has accepted a version of that deal. Hamas has not accepted that version of the deal.”

Hall highlighted her and her family’s decades of military experience in her answer.

“From that perspective, my family has a lot of skin in the game. I think I bring a credible voice to anything that we would talk about in foreign policy, and I believe in peace through strength,” she said. “For that reason, we have a long-standing ally through Israel that I support us continuing, making sure that we keep that relationship strong for the sake of world peace.”

Cooper said that he was in favor of a reset with Russia and China, but he also used his time during this question to talk about the difference between minimum wage and prevailing wage, which is paid to some workers in certain industries such as construction.

“Fifty dollars an hour can really change a person’s life,” he said. “I have individuals that work for me and they are able to sustain their family, and these are the things that I want to be able to speak on.”

Hall said she did not support writing a “blank check” to Ukraine, which was invaded by Russia in 2022. According to the U.S. State Department, the Biden administration has provided $55.5 billion in military assistance since February 2022.

Weir agreed that the U.S. should keep a hawkish approach toward China and Russia.

“China wants to be a superpower. Russia wants to be a superpower,” he said. “If these two, they want to align, and it’s a critical issue that the United States needs to address.”

There was sharp disagreement on the issue of abortion, with McBride saying she was proud of her role in making Delaware a sanctuary state as a legislator. She said she would fight any attempts to ban the procedure federally if elected.

“We are not safe from MAGA extremists who want to implement their Texas and Alabama agenda at the federal level,” McBride said. “Look, the far right wing told us that they weren’t going to overturn Roe. They overturned Roe. Now those same people are telling us that they won’t institute a nationwide abortion ban. They will. We will not be fooled.”

Cooper also said he supported leaving the decision up to women, while Hall and Weir said they opposed abortion.

“It’s a terrible thing, and I think that the Supreme Court is exactly correct, and they hit the point just right in regards to Roe versus Wade,” Weir said.

No action after hospital psychologist questioned credentials

Arnold’s arrest also spurred Brandywine to re-examine his nearly three years with the district.

Officials learned that two months before Arnold’s arrest, a psychologist at Nemours Children’s Hospital near Wilmington had alerted four administrators from Lombardy and the Brandywine district that the qualifications Arnold claimed might be bogus.

The district launched an investigation in July and suspended the four officials with pay while an outside attorney reviewed the matter. The four officials included Lombardy principal Michael McDermott, assistant principal Cara Beach, and Nicole Warner, district director of special education, WHYY News has learned from officials familiar with the matter.

Brandywine Superintendent Lisa Lawson, who was promoted from deputy superintendent days before Arnold’s arrest, told WHYY News earlier this month that officials made serious missteps, such as not notifying human resources officials about the Nemours complaints.

Beyond questioning Arnold’s credentials, the Nemours psychologist told Brandywine that Arnold had been confrontational with a hospital intern after insisting, even though he was not a licensed psychologist, that a young boy he was counseling had a mood disorder, Lawson told WHYY News. The hospital had diagnosed the child with autism.

Yet none of Nemours’ concerns reached Brandywine’s HR office, or Lawson herself, she said.

At Brandywine’s board meeting last week, members discussed the actions of the four employees behind closed doors in executive session, and later approved the district’s disciplinary recommendations at the public session.

Though the board didn’t name names and merely voted to “approve employee matter” 25-005, 25-006, 25-007, and 25-008, sources familiar with the matter said the members voted to terminate Warner, whose old post has been filled on an interim basis by Josette McCullough.

The sources said the board voted to dock pay fromMcDermott and Beach, who are back at work running Lombardy, where classes started Monday. The district took no action against the fourth, unidentified employee.

Lawson would not confirm who was disciplined.

“What I can say is that, based on the third party investigator’s recommendation for disciplinary consequences, we moved forward accordingly based on those recommendations,’’ Lawson said Monday.

Lawson added that employees have 10 days to request a hearing on the district’s decisions.

The superintendent also said Arnold was fired in July and could have sought a hearing from prison, but did not. No date for his criminal trial has been set.

Before the board vote, Lawson apologized and expressed her “deep regret” to members and the public about the district’s mishandling of the Nemours complaint.

She promised “accountability for those actions” as well as “consistent and fair consequences for all employees.”

Lawson also said the district would be “revisiting our hiring processes in collaboration’’ with the state, enhancing training on “ethical conduct and students safety, and creating more robust channels for reporting concerns directly to human resources.”