What is the Lake Erie Watershed?
The Lake Erie Watershed is the area of land, streams and rivers that drains into Lake Erie. This includes more than 11,000 square miles in portions of 35 counties in Northern Ohio. The major rivers in the Lake Erie Watershed include the Maumee, Portage, Sandusky, Huron, Vermillion, Black, Cuyahoga, Grand, Chagrin and Ashtabula. In the astronaut photo to the left, muddy brown water, potentially containing numerous nonpoint source pollutants, can be seen exiting the Sandusky Bay into Lake Erie. What is nonpoint source pollution? Nonpoint source pollution, or NPS, unlike pollution from industrial and sewage treatment plants, comes from many diffuse sources. NPS pollution is caused by rainfall or snowmelt moving over and through the ground. As the runoff moves, it picks up and carries with it natural and human-made pollutants and deposits them into lakes, rivers, wetlands, coastal waters and even our underground sources of drinking water. For example, agricultural lands and residential are
