Are you interested in volunteering to undertake meaningful work that will actually protect your local environment? One good way to do so is to become involved in a watershed protection organization. Did you know that everyone lives in a watershed?

A watershed is a part land use concept and part enviro-protection concept. According to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection, a watershed is the area of land that drains into a body of water such as a river, lake, stream or bay, that is separated from other systems by higher points, including hills or slopes.

A watershed includes the waterway itself as well as all of the land that drains into it. For example, the watershed of a lake would include not only the streams entering the lake but also the land area that drains into those streams and eventually the lake. Drainage basins, in turn, generally refer to large watersheds that encompass the watersheds of many smaller rivers and streams.

In the more developed parts of this country, there has been increased attention paid to watershed protection. The reason for this is that human intervention affects watersheds.

For example, changing where stormwater flows can negatively impact a watershed. By changing the contour of the land and adding stormwater systems, people change how and where the water travels.

Another way people affect a watershed is by adding pollution directly to the watershed. The type of pollutant that rainwater will pick up while traveling through a watershed depends in part on how the land it travels through is used. Thus, the manner in which land is used by people, whether it is farms, houses or shopping centers, has a direct impact on water quality.

Why is all of this important? Because watershed quality affects the quality of the water that we all rely on to drink, as well as the quality of water in our natural resources such as streams, rivers, lakes and groundwater. It is interesting to follow what appear to be very local, isolated creeks, and find out that they ultimately drain into large water bodies, sometimes situated many miles away.

Watershed organizations have been formed throughout the country to safeguard watersheds. They often consist of homeowners, residents, members of the business community and government, who are determined to work together for the common and important goal of furthering watershed protection.

New Jersey's Mullica Watershed Forum is one such organization. It is an informal association of residents, businesses, organizations and institutions who share a common interest in the future of the Mullica River watershed. The Forum was convened to educate, explore and discuss the opportunities and challenges facing the Mullica River watershed, now and in the future.

Since its inception, the Mullica Watershed Forum has created a slide presentation describing this unique watershed. It has also surveyed residents of the watershed about topics and issues relating to the watershed that they believe to be important.

According to Mariana Upmeyer, the organization is now planning a Workshop on Water Conservation through Better Landscape Design. In these workshops, the Watershed Forum will educate homeowners about the importance of protecting the health of their watershed, the negative impacts lawns can have on water quality, and how to replace portions of their lawns with native plants.

I am informed by Ms. Upmeyer that lawns have a dense and often shallow root systems that only allows 15% of all the water that falls on it to seep through the ground, thereby recharging aquifers. On the other hand, yard designs that use native plants & shrubs allow much more water to infiltrate, increasing the amount of water to wells.

In addition, native plants also require less water and fertilizer, further protecting our natural water resources.

The workshops will be presented by members of the Forum and other experts. More programs of a similar nature are also planned. Thus, you can see that the Mullica Watershed Forum is making a real difference. This is the kind of worthy effort that interested persons can undertake throughout this country.

The information provided in this column is written by Stuart Lieberman,a practicing environmental attorney, and is for general information purposes only. It is not legal advice and should not be used in place of legal advice.

Stuart Lieberman, Esq., and IRED.Com, Inc., will not accept any responsibilty for any reliance on the information in this column or any damages whatsoever resulting from reading this column.