California's Water: 'We All Live in a Watershed'

Facts on "We All Live in a Watershed "

Video from "We All Live in a Watershed"

Everyone lives in a watershed. We rely on watersheds for our water supply, recreation, and hydroelectric power, and plants and wildlife depend on them for habitat.

This segment of “California’s Water” focuses on watersheds and their importance to our environment, our economy and our well-being. Viewers will visit a key California watershed to learn how water moves through the natural landscape and find out what local agencies are doing to manage and protect these critical natural systems.

Background on the Issue

In simplest terms, a watershed is an area of land that drains into a particular body of water, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary or ocean. It is a natural system in which water is constantly in motion from the highest elevation to the lowest point – whether you can see it or not. Like fingers on a hand, small springs and streams within in a watershed feed into larger rivers and eventually make their way to the ocean.

Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. They can encompass millions of square miles, or just a few acres. Some watersheds are very large and include many smaller river basins or watersheds, which can in turn be subdivided into even smaller areas.

One key watershed in Northern California is the American River watershed, an area of more than 1,200 square miles extending from the crest of the Sierra Nevada to the confluence with the Sacramento River near Sacramento.

In Southern California, the Santa Ana River watershed is one of the largest and most important watershed systems. Covering an area of about 2,800 square miles, the watershed begins high in the San Gabriel and San Jacinto mountains and runs through the Santa Ana Mountains and Chino Hills before flowing into the coastal plain of Orange County and into the Pacific Ocean.

A watershed is a dynamic place with a complex web of natural resources, including soil, water, air, plants and animals. Everyone living or working within a watershed has an impact on those resources.

In recent decades, people have come to recognize that the best way to protect our vital natural resources is to understand and manage them on a watershed basis.

Watershed partnerships are emerging as a key way to protect watersheds and prevent pollution and other problems that can affect watershed health. With their focus on education and pollution prevention, these partnerships are proving to be an effective way to protect water quality, improve habitat and help promote healthy watersheds.

Partnerships can include anyone who lives, works or recreates in the watershed. Likely members include landowners, homeowners, local businesses, developers, recreationists, local governments, elected officials, teachers, civic groups and environmental organizations.

In California, watershed partnerships are developing sound management plans that will ensure the protection of key resources into the future.