The Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds works to protect the nation's marine and fresh water ecosystems. It develops cleanup plans for impaired waters, controls polluted runoff, and protects healthy waters through partnerships with states, tribes, and local groups. While America's water resources are abundant, around 40% are impaired and face threats from pollution, habitat loss, and hydrologic changes. Protecting water quality and restoring watersheds requires involvement from all levels of government as well as individual action within local communities.

1. The Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Wetlands, Oceans and Watersheds works to protect our marine and fresh water ecosystems

3. A watershed is an area of land that drains to a common body of water. Every watershed drains to a larger watershed that eventually flows to the ocean. Everyone lives in a watershed  even if you live in the desert or far from the coast.

4. Healthy communities depend on healthy watersheds

6. 88,000 square miles of estuaries and bays 41 million acres of lakes, ponds and reservoirs 107 million acres of wetlands 54,000 square miles of ocean and near coastal shoreline U.S. water resources 3.5 million miles of rivers and streams EPA ATTAINS Database, Assessed Waters of the U.S., October 2008

8. “ I started out thinking of America as highways and state lines. As I got to know it better, I began to think of it as rivers. America is a great story, and there is a river on every page of it.” Charles Kuralt American Journalist

34. EPA’s ocean-going ship, the OSV BOLD , reports on environmental conditions offshore

35. EPA works with landowners, watershed groups, state and local governments and others to develop cleanup plans that target priority problems within watershed boundaries

36. Not matter where you live, we all live in a watershed.. … .and our actions have a direct impact on the health of local water resources.