We all live in a watershed. A watershed is an area of land that drains to a common water body. The water body can range in size from a small creek to a flowing river. Watershed boundaries are natural and vary based on differences in geography and hydrology. Therefore, watersheds do not follow county, city or state boundaries. Since watersheds know no jurisdictional boundaries, managing our natural resources from a watershed perspective allows us to bring together stakeholders from different localities to focus on a shared resource, our surface water.
The Eastern Shore of Virginia watershed is a narrow 70-mile long finger of land that separates the Chesapeake Bay from the Atlantic Ocean, is home to the longest expanse of coastal wilderness remaining on the eastern seaboard of the United States. Eastern Shore creeks and tributaries feed into both the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean, is part of the Delmarva Peninsula and is separated from the rest of Virginia by the Chesapeake Bay. Its population was 45,695 as of 2020.
There are 13 active watershed roundtables in Virginia. These watershed roundtables represent the Albemarle-Chowan, Big Sandy, Eastern Shore, Middle James, Lower James, New, Potomac, Rappahannock, Shenandoah, Upper James, Upper Tennessee, Upper Roanoke and York Watersheds.
This cooperative project has been funded by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality through the Chesapeake Bay Implementation Grant (CBIG) from the United States Environment Protection Agency through contract #17247