Friends of Alum Creek and Tributaries (FACT) developed a new Geographic Information Systems (GIS) map identifying home sewage treatment systems in areas of high contamination. The map is now helping FACT work with state and county health departments to upgrade sewage systems there and, in doing so, protect the water supply of Westerville’s 35,000 residents.

Westerville’s city services director likewise worked with FACT to increase recreational access to Alum Creek, spur new recreational opportunities there,
and protect and restore small streams in the town.

Both cases saw success thanks to OSU Extension. The city officials and FACT all called on the OSU Extension Watershed Team, which works to build Ohioans’ capacity to protect, restore, and enhance watershed health. Its members partner with citizens, municipal officials, and Ohio watershed groups (the state has more than 120) to plan and deliver a wide range of services. They educate Ohioans via the online Ohio Watershed Network (with more than 300 Ohio subscribers) and the annual Ohio Watershed Academy (more than 80 students have completed it successfully) as well as develop plans to secure funding.

The team helped create action plans for Ohio’s Lower Alum Creek, Sandusky River, White Oak Creek, Pond Brook, and Blanchard River watersheds, with several plans receiving Ohio Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) endorsement and thus becoming eligible for state and federal funding. The team also helped start new watershed groups and trained volunteers in the Alum Creek, Pond Brook, Honey Creek, and Lower Olentangy River watersheds. Ohio Watershed Academy students have come from, among others, the Grand River Partners (northeast Ohio), the Lucas Soil and Water Conservation District (northwest Ohio), Akron’s Yellow Creek Watershed Storm Water Management Consortium, and Dayton’s Miami Conservancy District.

The U.S. EPA defines a watershed as “the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off it goes into the same place.” Indeed, every Ohioan lives in a watershed, and caring for the hundred-plus watersheds in Ohio — making them clean and healthy, and keeping them that way — means paying attention to all their parts: their interconnected rivers and streams, farms and forests, towns and cities, people and natural processes.

The OSU Extension Watershed Team, by serving the people that serve these places, keeps good, clean water in everyone’s reach.