Watersheds & Watershed Protection

Why Join a Watershed Group?

The activities of people upstream from where you live impacts you and the lives of people, fisheries and wildlife downstream. We all depend on watershed health for drinking water, flood protection, sustainable resources and other elements in determining the quality of life. The characteristics of each watershed are unique, which is why the trend across the nation is to bring residents, landowners and other interested agencies and parties together at the watershed level to help learn about the watershed and, together, make it healthier and sustainable in the long run. The goal is to create a sustainable physical environment, biological environment, and human environment, by looking at all of these components as an integral part of one entity, the watershed. Forming watershed groups is one way of organizing everyone in a watershed to work cooperatively to conserve and improve the health of the environment, especially water quality, fish and wildlife habitat, and therefore, improve the local quality of life.

What is a Watershed?

We all live, work and play in a watershed. Watersheds provide water for drinking, irrigation, agriculture, industry, boating, fishing and swimming, and home for a vast array of plants and wildlife. A healthy watershed is vital for a healthy environment and a healthy economy. A typical watershed is a drainage area whose boundary is defined by ridge tops, where water falling onto the ridge flows by gravity to a creek or river. Watersheds come in all shapes and sizes. The largest in Western Shasta County is the Sacramento River watershed, which begins at Mt. Shasta and flows to the ocean at San Francisco . Although the river begins as a trickle, it gets larger as water flows into it from dozens of smaller creeks, such as Bear Creek, Clear Creek, Cow Creek and Cottonwood Creek. Each of these creeks is also in its own watershed, and the watersheds flowing directly into the Sacramento. If you hike up to the ridge top of a watershed, in Clear Creek for example, you will see smaller creeks, called tributaries, flowing into Clear Creek. These tributaries are also called sub-watersheds, such as Dog Gulch, Orofino Gulch, Paige Boulder Creek, Kanaka Creek, and Stony Gulch. A watershed may be small enough to have only an intermittent stream, but it takes the combined volume of water from each tributary and creek to create a river as great as the Sacramento .

What is a healthy watershed?

In determining the health of a watershed, it is important to look at both the current conditions’ land ‘reference conditions,’ which may be 50-100 years ago. A watershed assessment of current and reference conditions primarily studies water quality and quantity, fisheries, stream side vegetation, air quality, fire history, geology, soils, vegetation, plant species, noxious weeds, wildlife, wildlife habitat, land ownership, land use, the economic, institutional and social settings, and management policies. Water quality can be an important indicator of watershed health, since as water moves through the watershed, it picks up tiny particles of soil, oil, manure, pesticides and other pollutants. Achieving and maintaining the health of a watershed depends on the responsible actions and cooperation of everyone in the watershed. wa·ter·shed : 1) the land area drained by a particular river, stream or creek; 2) a dividing range between two drainages; 3) a drainage basin or area that discharges its surface water through one outlet or mouth

Why Care About A Watershed

Cold, clean water is one of the most important natural resources flowing from the forests and wild lands of the north state. About 75% of the available water in California originates in the northern third of the state. 80% of the demand for that water is in the southern two-thirds of the state. California ’s largest river, the Sacramento , yields 35% of the state’s developed water supply and provides rearing habitat for 70% of all Chinook salmon caught off the California coast. For these and other reasons, there are numerous agencies, communities, businesses and people who care about the health of Shasta County watersheds. In the late 1960’s and early 70’s various government regulatory agencies made a commitment to protect the environment by regulating point source polluters. Tremendous improvement has been made since then and, as a whole, our environment is much cleaner. Today the pollution still found in watersheds tends to come from non-point sources, such as erosion, pesticide and oil runoff, over grazing, storm water, and from mine drainage, antiquated dams, and many other places. Regulatory agencies, such as U. S. Fish & Wildlife Service, California Department of Fish & Game, and the State Water Resources Control Board are committed to improving the health of Shasta County watersheds and are willing to work with residents, landowners and other interested parties to accomplish this goal.