About Delaware Water Quality
Plain-English water-quality guidance built for Delaware's water map.
Delaware has only three counties, but that doesn't mean water is simple here. A single town can be served by a municipal system, an investor-owned utility, a subdivision or mobile-home system, or a mix of public water and private wells. Groundwater is central to Delaware drinking water, especially in Kent and Sussex Counties, and coastal Sussex communities face saltwater-intrusion questions that public-water customers rarely think about. DelawareWaterQuality.com exists to translate all of that into a plain-English path anyone can follow.
We are an independent educational resource, not a state agency. We are not affiliated with the Delaware Division of Public Health, DNREC, the Delaware Department of Education, any municipality, water utility, or laboratory. We keep three commitments across every page on this site:
- We link to official sources for anything regulatory or safety-related, rather than restating a claim without a source
- We avoid alarmist language — water-quality topics get practical next steps, not fear-based headlines
- We always separate public-water compliance data from private-well test results, since they are not interchangeable
Who this site is for
Public-water households
Identify your exact system, find your CCR, search Drinking Water Watch, and understand notices, lead service lines, and PFAS monitoring before choosing treatment.
Private-well households
Find your well permit and record, understand DPH testing resources, and learn how to respond to bacteria, nitrate, iron, manganese, or salinity results.
Home buyers, sellers & landlords
Understand that Delaware does not have a New Jersey-style Private Well Testing Act, and learn what testing and record-checking steps still make sense for a transaction.
Schools & child-care centers
Find posted Delaware school lead-sampling resources, build a fixture inventory, and follow the separate requirements that apply to child-care centers and family child-care homes.
Offices, gyms & facilities
Use fixture inventory, bottle filler, drinking fountain, seasonal reopening, and flushing guidance built for facility managers.
Counties we cover
Delaware has only three counties, and our local guides cover all of them:
- New Castle County
- Kent County
- Sussex County
County pages are navigation hubs, not single water reports — each county contains multiple public water systems, private wells, and community-specific concerns. See Local Water Guides for details.
What you can count on, on every page
- Links to official Delaware and federal sources
- Independent, plain-English explanations
- Public water and private wells clearly separated
- A last-reviewed date, since regulatory details change
Related
DelawareWaterQuality.com is an independent educational resource and is not affiliated with any government agency.
Last reviewed: 2026-07-11. Report a correction.