There’s little doubt that discussions about water quality and quantity, and how to sustain both, will inundate the news throughout the next decades.  

Essential to life

The supply of water available for our use is limited by nature. Although there is plenty of water on Earth, it is not always in the right place, at the right time and of adequate quality.

We all know water is essential to life.  Our rivers, streams and wetlands are the collectors, filters, conveyors, and storage compartments for our nation’s fresh water supply.

Significant human-caused changes to wetlands, rivers and streams have resulted in a dramatic reduction in both water quality and quantity across the U.S. and the world.  In natural, undisturbed ecosystems, water falls on vegetation, drips onto the soil, percolates into the soil and slowly migrates down drainage into catchments like streams and wetlands.

Degraded and diminished

Damage to healthy wetlands, stream banks and riparian vegetation can diminish or eliminate key components of the water cycle, including interception of water by plants, infiltration of water into the soil and groundwater, and evapotranspiration of water taken up from the soil and transpired from plants. Damaged or denuded riparian areas, due to development and other human-caused disturbances, are not able to efficiently perform their intended function of slowing, and filtering and absorbing runoff.

Some 70 percent of urban water quality problems are the result of contaminated stormwater runoff.  Runoff from developed areas can contain oil, grease, excessive nutrients, pathogens, and heavy metals. Agricultural runoff can similarly degrade rural streams and wetlands. Along with tons of topsoil, agricultural runoff can contain excessive levels of phosphorus, nitrogen and toxic pesticides. The accumulation of these compounds within certain watersheds has caused significant increases in nutrient delivery to important estuaries. The resulting changes in dissolved oxygen levels have caused a severe decline in seafood production along areas of our coasts, including the area known as the Gulf Dead Zone.

On many rivers and throughout the remaining wetlands of the U.S., multiple impacts of development and inappropriate land use are affecting the health, productivity and use values of freshwater resources. Many of the potential effects of disturbance are cumulative.

Why restoration matters

While the magnitude of the problems facing our freshwater resources can seem overwhelming, each sustainable project that renews and restores healthy floodplain function, even to a portion of a stream, does make a difference. Only one inch of rain falling on one acre represents 27,154 gallons of water. One inch of rain falling on one square mile (640 acres) represents 17.38 million gallons of water to be naturally filtered, conveyed and stored.

Lush, healthy riparian areas are some of the most important ecosystems on Earth, and renewal and repair of these systems has numerous benefits for biodiversity, water quality, bank stability, erosion control, water quality and water quantity.  Real ecological function relies on these intact, healthy ecosystems.

As lower-cost, sustainable, vegetative approaches to aquatic resource renewal and repair become more accepted and trusted, we will begin to see real progress in the fight to save our freshwater resources. >Learn More