Get Involved: Things You Can Do to Improve the Waters You Enjoy

• Protecting Our Waterways
  This article on how the boating public and vessel operators can help protect marine and coastal habitats first appeared in the newsletter The Foghorn.

• Get Involved in Beach Protection and Clean Up Programs
  There are many ways to get involved in protecting the nation's beaches from water pollution.  Getting involved in a local clean up effort of other beach protection program is a great way to assist federal, state, and local officials in protecting your health while swimming at the beach. Some Volunteer Clean-ups:
  
  
  • International Coastal Cleanup
  • Coral Reef Monitoring Program
  • National Marine Debris Monitoring Programs

• How You Can Help
  Information to raise public awareness and encourage involvement in water quality issues.

• Protecting Your Watershed

• What You Can Do
  From OCPD's series of Coastal Watershed Factsheets.

• Protect Coastal Waters from Nonpoint Source Pollution
  When rain falls or snow melts, the seemingly negligible amounts of chemicals and other pollutants around your home and lawn get picked up and carried through storm drains to the local waterway. This site lists specific "dos" and "don'ts" that will help you reduce nonpoint source pollution and become part of the solution to keeping beach water clean.

• Participate in EPA's Citizen's Voluntary Monitoring Program
  Across the country, people are learning about water quality issues and helping protect the nation's water resources by becoming volunteer water quality monitors. Volunteers analyze water samples for dissolved oxygen, nutrients, pH and temperature; evaluate the health of stream habitats and aquatic biological communities; inventory streambank conditions and land uses that may affect water quality; catalog and collect beach debris; and restore degraded habitats. This site explains how you can get involved in monitoring beach water quality.

• Surf Your Watershed
  Most water is polluted from pollution-generating activities upstream. Therefore, it is important for you to know about pollutants entering the water from other communities. Surf Your Watershed will help you learn about pollutants and sources that affect the water quality in your local watershed.

• Adopt-Your-Watershed
  Watershed groups are very effective in identifying and stopping pollution problems by working through a local watershed group.  Join our national catalog of organizations involved in protecting local water bodies, including formal watershed alliances, local groups, and schools that conduct activities such as volunteer monitoring, cleanups, and restoration projects

• Information on the things everyone can do to help prevent pollution (for kids).
  A number of resources for Children's education and environmental stewardship.

• BayScapes
  BayScapes are environmentally-sound landscapes benefitting people, wildlife, and the Chesapeake Bay. BayScaping approaches landscaping through principles inspired by relationships in the natural environment.
  

Learn about Your State's Coastal Zone Programs:  

Other Coastal Zone Contacts