All of us live in a watershed and have an impact on the
rivers, streams and other water resources within its boundaries.
What is a Watershed?
- Click to enlarge. Source: nature-education.org
A watershed is an area of land which drains to a common waterway, such as a river or river system. Natural features such as hills, ridges or other elevated land areas form a watershed’s boundaries.
Watersheds cover both small and large areas of land. Your own neighborhood may be a watershed or part of a watershed (“subwatershed”). When it rains some water is absorbed into natural surfaces covered by grass, trees and gardens. Rain that falls on “hard” (impermeable) surfaces like your street, your next-door neighbor’s roof or a nearby parking lot flows downhill into the nearest stormdrain or stream. This water (or “runoff”) collected by these smaller streams eventually flows into larger streams.
Illinois contains 24 major watersheds.
The state of Illinois, except for the Lake Michigan watershed, is also part of the Mississippi River Basin, the fourth largest watershed in the world (the Lake Michigan watershed is part of the Great Lakes Basin).
What is “watershed planning” and why is it important?
- Source: Sue Smith
Within a watershed there will likely be a variety of water resources, including rivers, wetlands, and lakes. Humans and wildlife depend on these resources for drinking water, habitat, food, recreation and other needs. While we need clean water, human activities within a watershed often impact both water quality and quantity. Chemicals, sediments, changes in water temperature resulting from manufacturing, mining, crop and livestock production, and hydropower plants are only some of the pollutants that threaten our water resources. Increased residential and commercial development, often accompanied by new roads, adds more impermeable surfaces; the runoff from these surfaces collects leaking auto fluids, excess fertilizers and pet wastes, before flowing (untreated) into a stormdrain or stream. During periods of drought or low rainfall, decreased quantities of water in rivers and lakes mean increased concentrations of pollutants. For fish and wildlife, higher pollution levels threaten their health and ability to reproduce and survive. The cost to treat this more polluted water for drinking will be higher, and there may also be increased threats to human health.
- Prairie Rivers Network helps residents reduce flooding and stormwater pollution with rain gardens
Many communities in Illinois are responding to local water quality issues by developing watershed plans. Watershed plans typically address non-point source pollution (stormwater runoff) because that is a major source of water pollution. Watershed planning makes sense because it looks at the entire system of water resources within a watershed. The process attempts to understand not only the relationships among the waters within the watershed, but also the sources and types of water pollution impacting those waters. Information collected at a watershed level provides the opportunity to design targeted, more effective projects for reducing water pollution.
The process of watershed planning brings together a variety of people interested in finding solutions to local water quality problems. These stakeholders work collaboratively to collect information, analyze data, share ideas for solutions, seek funding and develop a plan for projects that will achieve a particular goal (i.e. improving water quality by better stormwater management, reducing flood damage by wetland restoration, or protecting water quantity using conservation measures).
Watersheds are unique in size, physical and social characteristics and water quality issues. While watershed planning is an incremental, flexible process, there are some basic steps common to most watershed planning efforts:
- Build partnerships
- Characterize the watershed
- Finalize goals and identify solutions
- Design an implementation program
- Implement the watershed plan
- Measure progress and make adjustments
(From U.S. EPA’s Handbook For Developing Watershed Plans to Restore and Protect Our Waters, p. 2-6)
Using watershed planning to improve water quality provides a multitude of benefits, some of which go beyond cleaner water. It increases local awareness of the need to protect water resources and provides an opportunity for community participation regarding the future of a critical resource shared by all. Watershed plan projects can add to citizens’ quality of life by providing or improving wildlife habitat, reducing localized flooding, and protecting water supplies for the future. Specific project activities, such as using native plant landscaping and protecting natural areas for stormwater management , improve the aesthetics of a town and may increase the value of residential properties.
PRN’s Capacity Building Program for Watershed Groups
While a growing number of communities and watershed groups in Illinois are interested in watershed planning to address local water quality problems, many do not have the knowledge or skills to successfully undertake and complete the watershed planning process. With funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, Prairie Rivers Network and the Illinois Lake Management Association (ILMA) developed a series of workshops designed to build the capacity of state watershed groups to create and implement effective watershed plans. Held from February 2009 to March 2011, these workshops provided information and skills on many aspects of watershed planning, including building partnerships, collecting watershed data, hiring technical experts and securing funding. For more information on the workshops, click here.
While we are not conducting watershed planning workshops at this time, PRN will continue to add information and resources to our website’s For Watershed Groups section. We invite you to explore this section, as well as let us know of groups and/or resources that we should add to our site.