Wilmington, Del., was the first permanent Old World settlement in the Delaware River Valley. Discovered by the Swedes in 1638, it became the main port of America’s First State. Now the old city’s municipal sewer and water collection and conveyance system is showing its age, its earliest extant parts dating from 1907.Wilmington joins nearby Newark and Middletown in an area about a third of the tiny state’s size, whose sewer and water needs are served by the New Castle County Department of Special Services. Serving 118,000 sewer customers who generate 50-plus million gallons of wastewater daily, the county maintains more
