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Unified Watershed Assessment Priority Watersheds
A key element of interagency efforts to protect and restore watersheds is the development and use of Unified Watershed Assessments (UWA). These assessments are designed to promote a renewed focus by state, territorial, federal, tribal, and local governments and their stakeholders to identify watersheds with the most critical water quality problems and work together to focus resources and implement effective strategies to solve these problems. In developing UWA, states identified watersheds not meeting clean water and other natural resource goals, including areas where preventive action is needed to sustain water quality and aquatic resources. This new approach was designed to target available resources, resulting in the implementation of effective strategies to solve watershed problems.
The highest priority UWA watersheds shown on these wetland program maps are category 1 watersheds at the Hydrologic Unit Code 8 digit level identified by states to receive targeted funding in fiscal years 1999 and 2000. These maps can be used for state or regional strategic planning or to determine if specific projects are located where it may have an affect on environmental quality of a priority watershed.
