 Its civilization versus nature's fury. Raging blizzards bury cities under thousands of tons of snow. Howly hurricanes tear apart coastal communities with wind and rain. And flash floods wipe entire towns off the face of the Earth. As the sky is clear, people begin to pick up the pieces. But after the storm, insidious damage is still being done. Our most vital natural resource is under assault, our nation's waters. We're at the Chattahoochee Nature Center and we're trying to find out what a watershed is. First victim. I need you to tell me what a watershed is. Do you have any idea? Watershed. A watershed? Where people go to the bathroom? Sweating, I guess. Something to do with sweating? Uh huh. Like after you run when you... You aspire, yeah. And then you shed it? Uh huh. We wanted to ask you if you knew what a watershed was. A watershed? Yeah. Is it kind of like the rain? Do you know what a watershed is? A shed that holds water. Come here for a second, I want to ask you something. Do you know what a watershed is? No. No. You have any idea? What do you think it has something to do with? What a watershed is, yeah. That's just a drain pool, I guess you'd say. Or the drain area. That's where the water, the rainwater drains into the river. Correct, that's a great answer. A watershed is that area of land that drains to a body of water. Be that if it's a river, a stream, the ocean, an estuary, a bay. Wherever you live, drains to some water body and you'd live in a watershed, so everyone lives in a watershed. And in this modern industrial age, our water sources are becoming more contaminated with each passing year. The biggest water quality problem that we have in the nation today is polluted runoff. All water east of the continental divide drains to the Atlantic, while water west of the divide flows to the Pacific. And one drop of rain can cross many different watersheds along the way. As runoff flows into rivers, streams and storm drains, the water picks up trash, dirt, bacteria, toxic chemicals and fertilizers, creating a super pollutants that is extremely hazardous to the environment. And the consequences of polluted runoff exist worldwide. The UN estimate is that there's about a billion people on the planet right now who don't have adequate access to fresh water. 97% of all water on earth is salty ocean water. Of the remaining 3% it's fresh. Over two thirds is frozen in glaciers and polar ice. That leaves less than 1% of all the planet's water for our use. I predict in the future that some of the U.S. water needs are going to come through pipeline because we have just overused our supply. To address the complex threats facing U.S. water resources, the Environmental Protection Agency recommends adopting a watershed approach. We're trying to reconnect some of the river. It's a method that looks at each watershed for its own unique set of environmental challenges and solutions. In many cases, people mistakenly identify large discharge pipes in the water as the problem. But that may not be the problem. It may be coming from agricultural runoff. It may be coming from stormwater runoff and parking lots and impervious surfaces. Every watershed is different and you need to look at each watershed in its own terms and then think systematically about how you remediate, how you clean up that watershed. In California, the Santa Monica Bay watershed drains a dangerous amount of polluted runoff after each storm. When it rains, literally the whole residue of urban living ends up getting washed into the storm drain system and ends up going straight into the bay on Santa Monica Bay's beaches with no treatment whatsoever. It's actually like a giant toilet flushing. Because of the pollution, the dog mess has been building up and building up and building up. When it rains, it flushes into the storm drain and goes directly into the surf. In 1996, the Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission proved there was a link between the contaminated runoff in the Santa Monica Bay and reports of illness afflicting people who swim there. What we did find was at the outlets of storm drains, no matter where they were up and down the bay, if there was a flow of runoff into the surf zone, those people that were swimming in those areas definitely experienced higher incidences of illnesses. The pollutants in the water affect surfers because we're actually the indicator species with all the pollutants. When we're in the waters, we're ingesting it through our skin and our mouth. Even if people don't take a swallowing water, it's still getting into our systems, our ears, any orifice on your body. And it causes infections. It can cause cold sore throats at the very least. I wouldn't want to swim in a water that's got those diseases in there. You know, just floating around, making more diseases. I've seen it pretty much as bad as it can be. I've seen crap floating out in the water, literally. Generically, we call it fecal coliform. More specifically, you might know of it as E. coli, salmonella, or enterococcus. Whatever's in poop. There's times when it tastes funky, for sure. Every day, the city and county of Los Angeles perform a battery of tests to keep the public informed about water quality in the Santa Monica Bay. Cesar Arzadan begins the monitoring process each morning by taking a series of coastline water samples. Then it's back to the lab for analysis. Most of the bacteria that you're going to see, it comes from feces. And when you put under the UV light, you're going to see a different kind of color. It's a fluorescent sign that there is a bacteria, and it's called E. coli. That one definitely eats feces from animals, or it could be humans also. The results are reported to the health department, and beach warnings are posted as necessary. The number of beach postings has decreased, and 85% of the beaches that have been monitored in California have received either A or B grades, and that's significantly different than four years ago. But while progress is being made in California, the harmful effects of polluted runoff are a growing concern everywhere. So what can the average person do to help reduce pollution in our watersheds? How you apply pesticides or not in your garden, how you wash your cars, making sure that you don't throw cigarette butts out onto the street. Do not dump things on the ground, especially oils or any chemical pollutants. Pick up after your dogs. A lot of people don't realize how important that is. And just be a conscientious citizen, and don't leave anyone on the ground. I think one person can make a difference, and it needs to make the difference. If not you, who? Coming up. We're heading for what's known as an ecosystem collapse. Can the Gulf of Mexico be saved from polluted runoff? It was a flood of apocalyptic scale. 26,000 square miles of the Lower Mississippi Valley inundated by water. More than 200 lives lost, and 600,000 people displaced from their homes. The flood of 1927 was the most disastrous in U.S. history, and its effects are still felt today. After the flood of 27, massive levees were put in place. And while they helped protect the Lower Mississippi River basin from flooding, the levees and other human activities would ultimately harm the watershed in unforeseen ways. The Gulf State of Louisiana is the terminus of the Mississippi River. The mighty watershed that drains 41% of the area of the lower 48 states into the Gulf of Mexico. We receive water from as far away as Montana, Michigan, to Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa. All those waters drain right past this area right here. But by the time all that water enters the Gulf, it has accumulated enough contaminants from polluted runoff to create an enormous hypoxic zone, an area of water lacking in vital oxygen. The size of the low oxygen zone in the Gulf of Mexico is about 9,000 square miles. That's equal to the size of the state of New Jersey. The shortage of oxygen is killing fish and other sea life and could potentially have a devastating effect on the regional economy. We are the largest navigation port in the United States. We are the second largest in the world. We have the largest fishery in this country. When we was crabbing, a lot of times all our crabs we did, we can't even sell them. The reason hypoxia should be of concern to most citizens in this nation is because it's a sign. It's a sign of the degradation of our water resources. We're heading for what's known as an ecosystem collapse. If you're going to have an ecological disaster caused by the offshore hypoxic areas, then that absolutely translates into an economic disaster. So what exactly is causing this dead zone in the Gulf? Hypoxia develops when an area of water receives excess pollutants, primarily an overabundance of nutrients, which produce large algae blooms that die off and lead to low oxygen. And since the Mississippi gets fed by tributaries that flow through 31 states, that adds up to a staggering volume of contaminated runoff. You have drainage into the Gulf of Mexico from the Ohio River, the Mississippi River and the Missouri River. Yet each of those three major river systems are watersheds in and of themselves with their own challenges and their own problems. The Mississippi River has always delivered a lot of water. That hasn't changed over the centuries. What's changed is the amount of nutrients in that water. In fact, the Mississippi's nitrogen levels in the lower Mississippi River have tripled since the 1950s, and the growing hypoxic zone off the Louisiana coast contains the disturbing evidence. It's like a rusty color, stanky, rotten looking. You see fish just swimming sideways, gasping for air and stuff like that. And when you pull up the nets, not a one shrimp alive. All dead, orange. The fish, they're rotten, like melting away and stuff like that. Can't breathe stuff. And it's just rotten. This is just a fact of life, the way we treat our water systems, because we use them as our garbage dumps. We use them to dilute our pollutants and things like that. And it flows downstream. Maybe the statistic is that if you're in New Orleans, the water that is going by you has passed through human guts something like three or four times before it gets to you. Incredibly, Louisiana boasts a natural resource that removes pollutants from the draining Mississippi, the once abundant wetlands. Plants that grow in wetlands produce these wonderful filters for everything that is coming into them. They trap sediment, they temper chemicals, and what leaves the wetlands is much, much cleaner water. Wetlands also provide an important habitat for birds and other wildlife. Sadly, the Louisiana wetlands are quickly disappearing. Coastal Louisiana has lost about 1.2 million acres of wetlands in the last 100 years. When we levied off the Mississippi, it cut off the Mississippi River water from the marshes. In addition to the levies, a network of man-made navigation channels is also compromising the wetlands by allowing saltwater to seep into the marshes. Once that saltwater travels up these channels and overflows the banks of these channels out into freshwater systems, such as this cypress swamp, that saltwater sits out there around the roots of these trees and kills them. They cannot survive saltwater, their freshwater plants. Eliminating the hypoxic zone will take more than saving our wetlands. Reducing nutrient runoff in the Mississippi River watershed is the heart of the problem. It's an issue involving over half the states in the nation and a vast array of industries, particularly farming, which uses nitrogen-rich fertilizer to grow its crops. Fertilizers are helping the United States produce the food for the world, but there is such a thing as overuse. There are scientists who have done the analyses and predict that you could reduce fertilizers by about 12 percent without reducing crop production and see a significant decrease in the amount of nitrogen going into the Mississippi River. Experts say the first key to changing behavior is raising public awareness. We all live downstream of somebody and we all live upstream of somebody. So what somebody else does in their watershed affects the water that I receive and what I do in my watershed affects the water that somebody else receives downstream. If we don't clean up our act, our water resources, which we simply cannot live without, will be ruined. Coming up, can the water supply for 9 million New Yorkers be saved from the ravages of polluted runoff? In January of 1996, one of the most devastating winter storms in history slammed the East Coast. Two feet of snow dumps on New York and throughout the Northeast Corridor. Schools, airports and roads are shut down. By the time it's over, the blizzard and resultant flooding caused $3 billion in losses and 187 lives are taken. And in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York, the snow melt triggers another potentially devastating crisis. Stormwater runoff, contaminated with trash, dirt, fertilizers and pesticides from nearby farms and communities, threatens the fresh water supply. And the Catskill system of reservoirs is vitally important for it is the biggest watershed of New York City, providing drinking water to over 9 million people. The miracle of the city's water supply system is largely unknown to most New Yorkers. You ask people, where does the water come from? Often people shug their shoulders and say, New Jersey. I figured that we were probably our own separate water system than from upstate. I'd rather be drinking water from upstate than the Hudson River. I don't know that most people are aware of how large the problem is and how close to crisis many of our water supply systems are. To preserve the purity of the reservoirs and enforce the Safe Drinking Water Act, the Environmental Protection Agency presented the Big Apple with two options. Either build and maintain a $6 billion facility to filter all of the city's tap water or fund a $1 billion program to protect the watershed from polluted runoff. When it comes to our investment in clean air and clean water, preserving open space, fixing antiquated sewage treatment plants, we can't wait. It doesn't get any less expensive. It gets more expensive. With the historic Watershed Agreement of 1997, an unprecedented upstate-downstate partnership was forged to protect the New York City water supply. The Watershed Agreement is saving New York City billions of dollars. The plan includes purchasing and preserving 355,000 acres of undeveloped watershed land, the upgrading of sewage treatment plants, and the protection and restoration of stream corridors. What we're looking at here is Main Tributary of the Osoapus Creek. During flooding, we were seeing a lot of sediment coming out of the stream. The clay gets into the water column and it becomes very turbid, and then it makes it very difficult to treat and clean that water. So from a water quality perspective, we're very concerned about erosion. The program also provides funding for farmers that implement agriculture management practices. Well, we have a very exciting program with the Watershed Agricultural Council where we are working with local farmers. We look at how they're handling the animals, so that the runoff associated with manure, fertilizer, and that farm activity isn't getting into the streams around our reservoirs. This water here is basically the water you're going to be drinking down in the city, and I feel I've got a responsibility to try my best to keep it clean for when it gets down there. It used to be when it rained here on the farm, the water that ran away from the back of the barn here was full of mud, manure, and it would just run brown and right into the stream. Two years ago, we would spread every day. We'd have to take it out, spread it on the fields. If the snow was deep, we'd spread it on the snow, and unfortunately, if the ground was frozen when the snow melted, the nutrient value of it for fertilizer was gone and wound up down in the reservoir. With New York City funding, a secure, above-ground steel tank that can hold 400,000 gallons of manure was installed on the Meadowbrook farm. That's enough storage for six months of the year. Now we can store it, spread it when it'll do the most good to us for fertilizer, and we don't have to spread it every day. I worked with Tim on the plan to develop the improvements we're going to make. The plan really belongs to the farmer, and it's a collaboration of their ideas and what technical advice we can bring to the program, but the farmer makes the decision. It's a program that seems to make everybody happy. It shares to the farmers who are working so hard to make sure we've got clean water to put in our coffee. To guarantee the city's water supply is fresh at the tap, comprehensive tests are performed by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, both in the lab and at over 1,000 sampling stations throughout the city. New York City has probably one of the most extensive water quality monitoring programs in the nation, not the world. We're sampling every day, 365 days a year. We've been drinking this water for 53 years, nothing else. That's water in the world. New York City, straight from the tap to my lips. Coming up, the future of our water supply remains at risk, but there's something everyone can do to help protect it. Find out how, next. To keep our watersheds free of pollutants will require the actions of every citizen, community and business. Paved concrete surfaces, asphalt, parking lots, sidewalks. The question is, do we need to have as many as we do? Because to the extent that you have too much impervious surface, the water is not retained on site. It doesn't soak into the ground. It runs off, picks up speed, carries pollutants and contaminants into the water body. One strategy for preventing stormwater runoff is occurring at the new Ford Rouge Center in Dearborn, Michigan. This remodeled truck plant is covered by a green roof the size of eight football fields. Planted with a porous ground cover, it reduces the amount of polluted runoff released into the watershed. The thing that tends to get the most attention is the 10-acre green roof, but that's really just part of a philosophy that if an area does not have to be paved or built upon, it's going to be green space. And communities are also implementing green space strategies, such as rain gardens. They sloped the lot in such a manner that all the flow goes towards this landscaping where basically the polluted runoff can percolate into the ground and get filtered rather than going straight onto the street into the storm drain system and really a very simple approach to cleaning up our runoff in urban areas. But perhaps the most powerful course of action is individual participation. People need to take responsibility for the state of our waters and water conservation is one area where they can do that as a committed citizen. All those things your mom told you, take a short shower, don't let the water tap run while you're brushing your teeth. Taking your household hazardous waste to a cleanup and recycling day, don't wash your car on the streets and put all those suds down into the drain. When you change your used motor L, you don't dump it into the street. Everybody's got to clean up after their pets. Obviously that's a big concern. Fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, make sure you don't use them any time there's any chance of rain coming up in the near future. When you're irrigating your lawn in your garden, make sure that you're not over spraying and causing all those chemicals to end up getting into the storm drain system. The only way we're going to solve the problem is if everybody does their part. We all live in a watershed. We all have an impact on our environment. And we must all play a role in the protection and restoration of our valuable water resources. To learn more about how you can get involved and to get a free brochure called After the Storm, visit epa.gov.