Watershed

BAY AREA WATERSHEDS

What is a Watershed?
In simplest terms, a watershed is an area of land that drains all of its water—rivers and streams, rainfall and snowmelt, and urban runoff—to one specific point. It extends from a point of high elevation, such as a ridgeline, down to a low point where the water flows into a creek, river, bay, ocean, or other waterbody. Watersheds come in all sizes, from large river systems to small creeks, and they cross county, state, and national boundaries. Wherever you are, you live, work, and play in a watershed.

Watersheds in the Bay Area
Watersheds in the Bay Area range from large ones like Alameda Creek watershed, 700 square miles including two counties and seven cities, to small watersheds such as the 1.1 square mile Codornices Creek watershed along the Berkeley/Albany border. For planning purposes, the Water Board has divided our 4000-square mile region into 47 prioritized “planning watersheds.”

Many water quality and ecosystem problems are best prioritized, addressed, and solved at the watershed level rather than at the individual city or site level. “Watershed management” integrates and coordinates all the activities that affect a watershed's natural resources and water quality. A watershed management approach includes: 

• Focusing programs and projects geographically
• Prioritizing and targeting water quality or ecosystem problems
• Promoting a high level of public involvement in projects and problem-solving
• Developing science-based, integrated solutions that mobilize the expertise and authority of multiple agencies and organizations
• Measuring success through monitoring and other data gathering

The Water Board uses a watershed management approach whenever possible. We try to work to improve the health of an ecosystem, watershed-wide, rather than focusing on an isolated stream, species, or pollution problem.

Working with residents and local groups
Local people play active roles in protecting many of the Bay Area’s watersheds. Water Board staff work with watershed councils and other partnerships whenever possible, involving the public and local, state, and federal environmental agencies in creek monitoring projects, and in planning and executing creek restoration projects.
Local knowledge and expertise is invaluable for development of local goals and performance standards.

• We work through watershed partnerships to facilitate rapid and coordinated stream assessments, which help us write better permits faster.
• We review permit applications in collaboration with watershed partnerships whenever possible, to make sure we’re addressing overlaps in regulatory authorities, avoiding conflicting requirements, establishing common objectives, broadening the expertise behind permit conditions, and better identifying management options through a group effort.

Funding opportunities
Water Board staff evaluate and recommend support for grant proposals seeking state or federal funding that advance watershed partnerships, demonstration stream restoration projects, and low-impact, environmentally sustainable stormwater management projects. We also encourage integration of San Francisco Bay Area water and watershed planning through the Proposition 50 and Proposition 84 Integrated Regional Water Management Program. To learn more about financial assistance programs for water quality projects in California, click here.

Watershed Management Initiative
To see the table of contents and download the San Francisco Bay Region’s WMI Chapter, click here.

For more information, please contact Dale Hopkins, our region’sWatershed Management Initiative Coordinator, dhopkins@waterboards.ca.gov.

Other Online Watershed References and Resources:
A Primer on Stream and River Protection for the Regulator and Program Manager: Technical Reference Circular WD 02-1 (pdf, 5.7MB)

• Regional and statewide water quality monitoring programs

U.S. EPA’s Watersheds Program provides a variety of tools and documents related to watershed management around the nation at http://www.epa.gov/owow/watershed/

U.S. Geological Survey “Science in Your Watershed” provides scientific information on streamflow, projects and other data at http://water.usgs.gov/wsc/watersheds.html

California Department of Water Resources information on watershed restoration at http://www.watershedrestoration.water.ca.gov/watersheds/

The California Watershed Network, a non-profit organization working to coordinate and enhance community-based watershed programs, provides news of activities, policies, and sponsors Watershed Awareness Day in Sacramento and biennial watershed forums:   http://www.watershednetwork.org/

New/additional/linked pages:

• The 47 “planning watersheds”
• List of watershed groups (pdf)

The Surface Water Ambient Monitoring Program, or SWAMP, has divided the 4000 square-mile San Francisco Bay Region into 47 “planning watersheds” in order to prioritize them for attention, and to develop a monitoring rotation that will include all of our region on a regular basis. The planning watersheds are between 30 and 200 square miles in area, with most between 50 and 100 square miles. Some of these planning watersheds are self-contained hydrologic units that drain to an estuary or the ocean (e.g., Sonoma Creek), while others combine adjacent watersheds (e.g., North San Mateo Coastal Creeks) or are subwatersheds within a larger drainage basin (e.g., Arroyo Mocho within the larger Alameda Creek.

Rough monitoring schedule from Karen here.
To learn more about our region’s monitoring program and the criteria we use to prioritize watersheds, see our monitoring page, or download the SWAMP workplan.

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