"A good doctor treats the patient, not the disease." - Aristotle

Over the past several decades, government agencies and citizen groups have recognized that efforts to reverse the trends of environmental degradation must be undertaken in a basin-wide context, to address the whole spectrum of activity and resource use throughout the watershed, from the headwaters to the receiving waters. Traditional environmental protection activities that do not consider the entire drainage area cannot successfully restore or protect downstream aquatic ecosystems from the impacts of basinwide activities.

State and local governments, as well as citizen and other non-governmental initiatives have played a valuable role in watershed-based protection, often organizing and spearheading efforts at local levels before federal agencies become involved. Federal agencies also have a long history of attempting to address many of these problems through a watershed approach, working within the limitations of their respective mandates.

State Initiatives

As the "front line" administrators of most pollution control and coastal protection programs, several coastal states are taking the lead in realigning their water quality programs along watershed boundaries. For example, North Carolina's "whole basin approach" to water quality protection focuses on coordinating and integrating all program activities for each of the State's 17 major river basins, including permitting, monitoring, modeling, and wasteload allocations; nonpoint source assessments; special intensive studies; and planning. Managers focus resources on conducting these activities one basin at a time in an effort to develop basin management plans that assess all priority problem areas and pollutant sources within the system. These plans will then provide a basis for management decisions such as National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit renewals, enforcement, and monitoring. The stated goal of this effort is to develop basinwide strategies that protect surface water quality and use while allowing for sound economic planning. North Carolina anticipates that it can adopt the whole basin approach with minimal changes to the structure of the current water quality program through increased information exchange and coordination across agency programs, as well as the use of more complex water quality modeling, data interpretation, and data base management.

Another example of a watershed protection effort that goes beyond water quality protection is the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) integrated resource management approach to maintain biodiversity over entire watersheds, landscapes, and ecoregions. Using this approach, DNR's focus will shift from jurisdictional entities, such as state forests, to ecological land units. A first step in the process -- for which the goal is to sustain entire ecological systems -- has been to identify high-priority landscape areas such as large watersheds, forest areas, and prairie/farmland landscapes. These areas are then the focus of integrated management efforts involving a full range of state and federal agencies, local governments, and private sector organizations. While this initiative is in its early stages, there are indications that Minnesota's efforts to reorganize its major natural resources agencies along ecosystem lines will result in increased emphasis on watershed management and protection throughout the State.

Non-Governmental Efforts

Non-governmental watershed protection programs have played an increasingly important role in protecting valuable areas for wildlife and other purposes, as pressures have risen to limit public expenditures for maintenance and development of parks and protected areas. For instance, the Nature Conservancy (TNC) acquires and maintains carefully targeted areas of unique ecological importance, and has actively promoted the acquisition of riparian lands for the purpose of creating buffers or conservation easements along rivers, streams, and wetlands throughout the country. Since 1975, TNC also has been refining procedures for identifying and ranking natural areas to focus its acquisition and management activities on properties containing rare or threatened species or ecosystems, and has compiled this information for many states on a hydrologic unit (watershed) basis.

Local citizen groups have been very effective at helping to restore watersheds. For example, watershed restoration of the Mattole River in California was begun by a small group of about a dozen people residing in the Mattole watershed. This group, called the Mattole Watershed Salmon Support Group (MWSSG) initiated erosion control, reforestation, fishery habitat repair, and habitat enhancement. Later, a larger group known as the Mattole Restoration Council (MRC) was formed for long-range planning and active watershed restoration through consensual decision-making. The group's guiding principle in watershed restoration has been to imitate natural processes as closely as possible. Early activities included a citizen-conducted fishery habitat inventory throughout the watershed. Citizens also inventoried the remaining old growth forests, and more recently, systematically identified sources of erosion in the watershed and prescribed remedial actions. In the estuary, the MWSSG has attached driftwood structures to the riverbanks to provide shade and shelter to juvenile king salmon and steelhead, and a two-year effort is underway to create a fishery enhancement plan. School children as well as local residents and landowners have been extensively involved in the restoration work, especially in the release of young salmon.

As another example of citizen watershed protection efforts, in 1987, approximately 200 people representing private citizens, conservation and environmental organizations, elected officials, university faculty, and government convened to identify ways to solve resource management problems related to the Illinois River. Participants agreed that the river needed to be managed as a system and that soil erosion and sedimentation were major problems affecting functions of the river, including recreational use, fish and wildlife protection, and flood conveyance. Following up on the recommendations that resulted from this meeting, the Illinois River Coalition/Father Marquette Compact was organized by citizens from five river counties to build a regional consensus and tap governmental resources for river restoration. The Heartland Water Resources Council was organized to focus on managing and restoring the river in the area around Peoria. The Soil and Water Conservation task force, made up of the elected directors of seven conservation districts along the river, as well as advisors from industry, state and federal agencies, and conservation organizations, began working to accelerate the implementation of conservation practices throughout the watershed. The task force also receives grants and equipment from the Caterpillar Tractor Company and funding from the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources to accomplish its training and technology transfer activities.

Finally, a number of volunteer citizen monitoring efforts, such as Save Our Streams (SOS), have helped collect water quality data needed to assess impacts of management actions throughout watersheds, as well as to educate local communities about what they can do to protect their water resources. Recently, as part of the Mississippi River Project '93, more than 1,000 students in the ten states along the Mississippi and more than 1,000 students in other areas conducted water quality sampling for this major initiative for the Year of the Gulf of Mexico. This project was to help students better understand the important relationship between the river and the Gulf into which it flows. It also demonstrated that we are all connected through our water resources, and that we each can be a part of the solution to problems that threaten them.

Federal Efforts

Federal agencies with responsibilities for infrastructure development, resource management, and environmental protection programs also have supported or administered some type of watershed protection or management planning. In many cases, their efforts involve active participation by a range of parties with an interest in the resource issues being addressed, and often, these agencies work as a team with other federal and state agencies to resolve such issues.

For example, ecosystem-based management of natural resources, which frequently is accomplished through watershed approaches, is essential to achieving sustainable agricultural production that ensures environmental quality while meeting society's changing needs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) initiatives related to watershed and aquatic resource quality include education and technical assistance provided to state and local levels, research and development, and data base development and evaluation. USDA's Soil Conservation Service (SCS) watershed approach, which focuses on agricultural land owners in small watersheds, is a comprehensive planning process that considers all resources in the watershed -- soil, water, air, plants and animals -- while including social, cultural and economic factors. The process tailors workable solutions to ecosystem needs through the participation and leadership of stakeholders in the resources. The resulting watershed plans contain goals to be attained to address defined resource problems and identification of federal, state and local sources of technical, educational and funding assistance for achieving those goals.

The concept of watershed dynamics and functions is also integral to Army Corps of Engineers (COE) flood control and navigation projects, since both demand an understanding of the routes, amounts, and velocities of water as it drains from upland to streams, rivers, wetlands, and coastal areas. Consequently, watersheds have been incorporated into COE planning activities as fundamental hydro-geographic units to be considered in regional planning efforts, thus assuring that the collective effects of all anticipated activities (flood control, navigation, agriculture, transportation, natural resource management, housing, etc.) can be properly evaluated. To this end, the COE is currently revising its environmental planning guidance to give full attention to the importance of ecosystem management via watersheds. The COE also is promoting a new class of projects, the benefits of which will improve the environment by restoring fish and wildlife habitats within a watershed that either have been degraded by a COE project or that could be effectively restored through a COE project.

In addition to the COE projects described above, the Department of Defense (DOD) manages more than 300 major installations on approximately 25 million acres across the United States. Environmental planning, special environmental enhancement projects, and consultation with outside agencies are incorporated into the installation management process to ensure the best protection and conservation of natural resources possible on DOD property. As a result, environmental impacts are minimized, nonpoint source pollution is reduced, hazardous waste production is controlled, and sensitive resource areas such as wetlands are afforded special protection. As a key member of the local community, DOD provides a federal link in a watershed management approach which is essential to responsible stewardship of the diversity of resources throughout the ecosystem.

The DOD program includes a special initiative, the Legacy Resource Management Program, designed to identify, protect, and enhance the management of natural and cultural resources. Approximately 600 projects have been funded since the program's inception in 1991. For example, Legacy has funded restoration of some 1,600 acres of bottomland hardwood wetlands at Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana. Another Legacy-funded project is the acquisition of the last remaining 225 acres of low elevation old growth spruce forest in the Puget Trough by the Department of the Navy, to ensure conservation of natural habitat vital to the Northwest Pacific watershed ecology. This effort, located at Naval Radio Station (T), Jim Creek, Washington, ensures a buffer of virgin old growth around lakes, creeks, and wetlands, not only preserving the area's essential water supply but also preserving the unique wildlife habitat.

Traditionally, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) Coastal Zone Management (CZM) program has served as the foundation for watershed protection in state-defined "coastal zones." Recently, Congress passed the Coastal Zone Act Reauthorization Amendments of 1990 (CZARA) to give special protection to coastal waters in light of increasing beach closures, shellfish harvesting prohibitions, and the loss of biological productivity. CZARA is a joint AA- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) effort that requires state water quality agencies to work with coastal zone management agencies to develop coastal nonpoint source pollution control programs that "restore and protect coastal waters." This provides an opportunity for states to build on EPA's Section 319 nonpoint source management programs under the Clean Water Act (CWA) and the land use management expertise of programs approved under the Coastal Zone Management Act to control nonpoint source contributions to coastal waters on a watershed scale.

The Department of Interior has a number of programs that use a watershed approach in addressing specific issues. For example, the U.S. Geological Survey uses hydrologic units in evaluating the quantity and quality of our Nation's waters. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) of the Department of the Interior has a number of habitat restoration and wildlife protection programs that use a watershed approach. In the Partners for Wildlife program, the FWS works with private landowners to restore valuable habitats, for instance, by fencing cattle out of stream beds to restore habitat for endangered freshwater mussels and other stream-dwelling species. The FWS Interjurisdictional Rivers Program was established to help correct the effects of past land management practices on a basin scale by working with a range of parties with a stake in the watershed resources. The FWS Bay/Estuary Program uses a watershed/ecosystem approach, focusing on important coastal watersheds to restore, protect, and enhance living resources. Some of the program's actions thus far include restoration of fish passage and important habitats through partnerships with other agencies and local interests. One specific goal of the Bay/Estuary Program is to protect the ecosystem and thus avert the need for new listings under the Endangered Species Act.

Several EPA programs under the CWA require or support watershed or "areawide" planning and management. For instance, EPA efforts to assure the attainment of water quality standards under the CWA incorporate wasteload and load allocations for point and nonpoint sources to a waterbody based on its total capacity to assimilate contaminant loadings from its watershed. EPA's National Estuary Program (NEP) aims to protect and restore water quality and living resources in estuaries and their drainage basins. Comprehensive management plans for NEP sites are developed through a partnership of federal, state, and local agencies responsible for protecting and managing estuarine resources and the citizens and businesses who depend on the estuary for their livelihoods and quality of life. Activities to protect and improve water quality and living resources of the estuary are defined in these plans for the entire surrounding land area or watershed of each NEP site.

EPA is currently leading a major effort to promote watershed protection as the basic framework for the water quality programs it administers or supports. The key elements of this approach are: (1) the formation of partnerships among people with an active interest in the watershed (the stakeholders); (2) joint identification of the problems or primary threats to human and ecosystem health; and (3) implementation of problem-solving actions in an integrated fashion. While this is not a new concept, it is intended to provide a new focus and framework for integrating ongoing programs around hydrologically-defined areas and move beyond improving chemical water quality to include measures of ecological health (i.e., physical quality, habitat quality and biological quality).

Go to Section IV: Visions of the Future: A New Perspective

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