Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team (GIT 4)

The Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team works to keep local watersheds healthy across a range of landscapes, bringing attention to the challenge of protecting streams and watersheds that are healthy today and restoring waters if they become degraded. An updated map of State-Identified Healthy Waters and Watersheds and progress toward the Maintain Healthy Watersheds goal can be viewed at Chesapeake Progress

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Scope and Purpose

The goal of the Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team (HWGIT) is to maintain local watersheds at optimal health across a range of landscape contexts. With this goal, the HWGIT intends to bring attention to the challenge of protecting streams and watersheds that are healthy today, as a programmatic complement to the “impaired waters” approach which focuses on restoring waters if they become degraded. Healthy watersheds sustain local social, economic, and environmental benefits at optimal levels and contribute to achievement of Chesapeake Bay Program goals for the tidal Chesapeake Bay and tributaries. The optimal levels at which such benefits are sustainable will depend upon the landscape context of the watershed.

The principle rational for setting the Healthy Watersheds goal is that balanced strategies for natural resource restoration, protection, investment, and management are necessary to achieve a sustainably restored Chesapeake Bay. Conserving natural resources is a more cost-effective strategy to achieve Chesapeake Bay water quality goals. In addition, maintaining healthy local watersheds is more meaningful to communities since the majority of citizens are more likely to be concerned about the health of their local streams than the Chesapeake Bay.

The HWGIT has identified four strategies to ensure the long-term conservation of healthy watersheds: 1) tracking the health of watersheds and our effectiveness in protecting them, 2) strengthening local commitment and capacity to protect healthy watersheds, 3) improving protection of state-identified healthy watersheds under federal programs and federal agency decision-making, and 4) supporting state-based efforts to improve assessment and protection of healthy watersheds.

Projects and Resources

Preliminary Healthy Watersheds Assessment for the Chesapeake Bay Watershed

In 2017, the EPA Healthy Watersheds Program published the results of their Preliminary Healthy Watersheds Assessments (PHWA) project, a set of watershed health and vulnerability assessments across the United States. The PHWA was designed to help states implement the Clean Water Act’s goal of maintaining high quality waters and to provide a foundation of nationally consistent data that can be built on and enhanced. The HWGIT agreed that utilizing the results of the PHWA along with additional jurisdictional data could address major gaps identified in the Healthy Watershed’s Management Strategy. HWGIT staff and state leads are working with a contractor, Tetra Tech, to (1) integrate state data in to the PHWA to summarize conditions of state-identified healthy watersheds, (2) identify state-identified healthy watershed vulnerabilities, and (3) develop an approach that can be utilized in the future to determine if state-identified healthy watersheds are being maintained.

Map of State-Identified Currently Healthy Waters and Watersheds (2017)

The most current (2017) map of state-identified healthy waters and watersheds. The Healthy Watersheds Outcome in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement states that one hundred percent of these waters and watersheds will remain healthy.

Conservation Land-Use Policy Toolkit

This toolkit provides local governments in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed with information about land use policy tools they can use to slow the conversion of farmland, forestland, and wetlands.

Healthy Watersheds Forestry TMDL Forest Retention Study: Methodology, Findings and Recommendations

(09/23/15) A status report on a project funded by the Maintain Healthy Watersheds Goal Implementation Team.  The goal of the project was to model and test alternative land use growth scenarios in a portion of the Rappahannock River Basin as a proxy for the Chesapeake Bay watershed by employing the methodology used by EPA TMDL modelers and using real land use data from the localities in the test area to determine the potentail value of a BMP in the TMDL model for retaining forestland.

Healthy Watersheds Forestry TMDL Forest Retention Study: Phase 2 Final Report

A Virginia and Pennsylvania partnership focused on expanding the use of forestland to meet Chesapeake Bay Watershed goals from the perspective of the local leaders who are responsible for making it happen.

Summary Report: Potomac Watershed Assessment Methodology

The Nature Conservancy conducted a watershed assessment to delineate healthy watersheds in the Potomac watershed portion of West Virginia.  This project was funded by the Maintain Healthy Watersheds GIT in 2014 and was completed in the fall of 2015.  The methodology used was the same as the one applied in the West Virginia Watershed Assessment Pilot Project.  As part of this project a comprehensive 39 metric index of overall watershed health was created.

Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds: A Literature Review

This paper explores the various methods that have been used to quantify the value of ecosystem services. Specifically, it examines payment for ecosystem service schemes, willingness to pay studies and cost avoidance scenarios. Cost avoidance scenarios, although generally considered to capture only the lower bounds of actual value, are used to communicate a clear message to society about the potential costs of losing an ecosystem service and replacing that service. Many case studies that examine the costs of replacing ecosystem services highlight the economic benefits of protecting healthy watersheds.
 

Map of State-Identified Currently Healthy Waters and Watersheds (2015)

The 2015 map of state-identified healthy waters and watersheds.  The Healthy Watersheds Outcome in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed Agreement states that one hundred percent of these waters and watersheds will remain healthy.

Approach to Chesapeake Bay Land Use Policy Tasks

Tetra Tech has developed an approach for (1) conducting surveys to identify policy options, incentives, and planning tools effective at reducing land conversion, (2) conducting a study to determine the range of existing policy options, incentives, and planning tools that are currently being implemented, and (3) creating an online repository of such examples to serve as a user-friendly knowledge base.

Map of State-Identified Healthy Watersheds with Protected Lands

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