The Potomac Watershed Partnership (PWP) is providing a new opportunity to enhance the quality of life for all creatures that depend on the Potomac River basin. The Partnership is one of 15 such partnerships nationwide that are bringing public and private organizations together to protect the nation’s most vital watersheds.
The PWP, for example, draws on the strengths of six primary organizations—the U.S.D.A. Forest Service, the Virginia Department of Forestry, the Maryland Department of Natural Resources/Forest Service, Ducks Unlimited, the Potomac Conservancy and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection. Working with private landowners, community organizations, businesses, and governments, the Partnership has undertaken a variety of efforts to protect the land and waters of this important watershed.
Projects are being designed to improve water quality; enhance forest, wetland, and aquatic habitats; restore threatened and endangered species; reduce erosion; and conserve open space. Citizens benefit from these efforts as well—through healthier streams and landscapes, improved flood and fire control, increased land values, education, and even short-term project employment.
The Partnership is focusing primarily on the Shenandoah and Monocacy rivers, as well as Antietam Creek. These sub-watersheds have the lowest percentage of healthy riparian forests and wetlands, the highest levels of nutrient and sediment pollution, the most forest tracts destroyed by gypsy moths and wildfire, and some of the greatest development pressures in the Potomac basin.
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• Watershed Assessments: Watershed assessments provide both a large-scale view of target watersheds needed to identify and address problems, as well as specific local information regarding the ecological health of streams, soils, and forests. This information provides the foundation for measures of environmental change resulting from project actions.
• Riparian and Wetland Restoration: The planting of riparian buffers throughout the watershed results in the reduction of nutrients from agricultural or grazing fields, increased habitat, and the cooling of streams and rivers, which promotes the restoration of native species. Riparian forests are essential to aquatic habitat health and help to protect the municipal drinking water supply.
• Upland Forest Stewardship and Fire Risk Reduction: These efforts reduce the risk of catastrophic fire, lessen the impacts of mountain harvesting, increase citizen awareness of the natural environment, improve forest health conditions, and enhance open space.
• Watershed Monitoring and Applied Research: Watershed education programs have achieved two critical goals—gathering hard scientific data to direct on-the-ground work while mobilizing and educating people about the multiple benefits and cost effectiveness of these programs.
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Background reference materials;
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