National Watershed: South Atlantic-Gulf Region

Citrus County’s Watershed: crosses 2 watershed districts

Withlacoochee Watershed Profile

Crystal-Pithlachascotee Watershed Profile

Why Watersheds?

Depending on where we live, we cross quite a few brooks, creeks, runs, branches, gulches, arroyos, bayous, ditches, or channels as we drive to work each day. Each stream we cross is part of a massive network of perhaps three million streams that drain to the rivers and, ultimately, to the sea. Each stream has its own watershed that circumscribes all of the land that drains to the point where we cross it. Collectively, these small watersheds provide critical natural services that sustain or enrich our daily lives: they supply our drinking water, critical habitat for plants and animals, areas of natural beauty, and water bodies for recreation and relaxation. Small streams are an important element of our local geography, and confer a strong sense of place to a community.

Communities across the nation are turning to watershed protection to sustain the watershed services that they stand to lose as they grow. Regardless of region, the underlying cause of threats to watershed quality and health is usually the same: watershed development. Current or future watershed development has been implicated as a prime threat to salmon runs in the streams of the Pacific Northwest, coral reefs in the Florida Keys, freshwater mussel diversity in Midwestern streams, endangered salamanders found in Texas springs, shellfish harvesting along our coastlines, sea grass beds in Long Island Sound, and trout streams across the country.

Watershed Advocacy: Promoting watershed advocacy is important because it can lay the foundations for public support and greater watershed stewardship. One of the most important investments that can be made in a watershed is to seed and support a watershed management structure to carry out the long-term stewardship function. Often, grass roots watershed management organizations are uniquely prepared to handle many critical stewardship programs, given their watershed focus, volunteers, low cost and ability to reach into communities. Watershed organizations can be forceful advocates for better land management and can develop broad popular support and involvement for watershed protection. Local governments also have an important role to play in watershed advocacy. In many watersheds, local governments create or direct the watershed management structure.

Florida Watershed Indicators Report - from Scorecard, the pollution information site

Fifteen Things You Can Do to Make a Difference in Your Watershed from the EPA’s website

Environmental Websites for the Withlacoochee Watershed area

Environmental Websites for the Crystal-Pithlachascotee Watershed area

Index of Watershed Indicators - see a variety of indicators that point to whether your watershed is "well" or "ailing" and whether activities on the surrounding lands that affect our waters are placing them at risk.

How To Protect Your Watershed - from the Water Environment Federation website.

Targeted Watershed Grants Program - is a relatively new EPA program designed to encourage successful community-based approaches and management techniques to protect and restore the nation’s waters. The watershed organizations receiving grants this year exhibited strong partnerships with a wide variety of support; creative, socio-economic approaches to water restoration and protection; and explicit monitoring and environmentally-based performance measures.

Forty states, ten tribes, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia participation in this year’s program. Click for a listing of the 2005 watershed nominations.