Watershed Management

Water sheds into lakes from surrounding hills and houses outside Orlando, Florida.

What is a watershed? A watershed is simply the geographic area through which water flows across the land and drains into a common body of water, whether a stream, river, lake, or ocean. It includes tributaries (wetlands, streams, canals, ditches, etc.) as well as stormwater runoff from the land, the quality and quantity of which are affected by all the alterations to the land--agriculture, roadways, urban development, and the like. Watersheds are usually separated from other watersheds by naturally elevated areas.

Why are watersheds important? Because the surface water features and stormwater runoff within a watershed ultimately drain to other bodies of water, it is essential to consider these downstream impacts when developing and implementing water quality protection and restoration actions. Everything upstream ends up downstream.

Florida's Watershed Management Program was created to embrace this holistic, ecosystem-based approach  and to integrate Florida's longstanding water quality protection programs into more effective, comprehensive action. The program specifically implements the provisions of the Florida Watershed Restoration Act of 1999, section 403.067, Florida Statutes, but it encompasses other legal authorities, voluntary programs and practices, public education, and financial assistance, all directed at cleaning up water pollution or preventing it in the first place.

Watersheds are natural features. In order to best protect and restore them, DEP has defined some organizing boundaries based on these natural features to make environmental management easier, more effective and more uniform across programs. The map below reflects the major identified watersheds in Florida.

Major Identified Watersheds in Florida

The watershed program is divided into six areas that implement water quality protection and restoration activities directly or coordinate with other programs in a broad-based strategy of resource protection.

Watershed Monitoring and Data Management - Conducts Florida’s surface and ground water monitoring programs, including cooperative efforts with other agencies in the state that monitor water quality and quantity. It also integrates monitoring data into a centralized statewide repository.

• More water quality data and other sources of environmental information are available at DEP's Water Data Central.

Watershed Assessment - Using data from the monitoring program and other sources, this section evaluates the impacts of wastewater facilities, industries, agriculture, septic tanks, urban development and other sources of pollution on Florida's surface waters. It identifies surface waters that do not meet water quality standards ("impaired waters") and establishes the restoration objectives necessary to clean them up, called total maximum daily loads or TMDLs.

• What is a TMDL? A scientific determination of the maximum amount of a given pollutant that a surface water can absorb and still meet the water quality standards that protect human health and aquatic life. Water bodies that do not meet water quality standards are identified as impaired for the particular pollutants of concern--nutrients, bacteria, mercury, etc.--and TMDLs must be developed, adopted and implemented for those pollutants to reduce pollutants and clean up the water body.
• The threshold limits on pollutants in surface waters--Florida's surface water quality standards on which TMDLs are based--are set forth primarily in rule 62-302, Florida Administrative Code, and the associated table of water quality criteria.

Watershed Planning and Coordination - Coordinates the activities of the watershed restoration program with local government and business leaders, environmental groups, interested citizens, and other local stakeholders. Staff in this section lead the development of local Basin Management Action Plans (BMAPs) to implement the requirements of TMDLs.

• What is a BMAP? A comprehensive set of strategies--permit limits on wastewater facilities, urban and agricultural best management practices, conservation programs, financial assistance and revenue generating activities, etc.--designed to implement the pollutant reductions established by the TMDL. These broad-based plans are developed in conjunction with local stakeholders--they rely on local input and local commitment--and they are adopted by Secretarial Order to be enforceable.

Nonpoint Source Management - Implements Florida's "Section 319" grant program, which provides some $9 million annually to local governments to implement projects--stormwater retrofits, best management practices, public education--that reduce or promote the reduction of contaminants from stormwater and other sources of pollution that do not originate from specific discharges.

NPDES Stormwater - A regulatory program that implements permitting, compliance and enforcement activities associated with certain urban stormwater systems, industrial activities and construction sites. Florida's program operates under an agreement with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to fulfill the requirements of the federal National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES).

Ground Water Protection - Assesses the quality of Florida’s ground water resources, which serve as the source of drinking water for more than 90% of Florida’s residents and visitors, and works with the watershed program and other DEP programs to assure protection of these resources, which are intimately connected with Florida's surface waters through spring systems, wetlands, ground water recharge areas, and other places where surface and ground waters interact.