Benefits of Healthy Watersheds
Upcoming Webinar!
EPA's Healthy Watersheds Program is hosting a webinar on Tuesday, December 1, 2026 at 1pm EST featuring researchers whose work is highlighted in the April 2026 Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds fact sheet. Add the event to your calendar! No registration required.
Healthy watersheds are characterized by both natural lands and well-managed agricultural and developed lands that support intact and connected aquatic habitat and good water quality conditions. Healthy watersheds provide a variety of benefits, or ecosystem services, critical to our economic and social well-being.
Visit EPA’s Ecosystem Services Research webpage for more information about ecosystem services and resources/tools to evaluate their benefits.
Fact Sheet: The Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds (2026) (pdf) This fact sheet compiles state-by-state evidence demonstrating the measurable economic returns of watershed protection across six benefit categories: drinking water treatment cost savings; natural hazard mitigation; recreation and tourism; subsistence hunting, fishing and foraging; quality of life and health; and property values. The fact sheet draws on peer-reviewed literature and studies published since the original 2012 publication to illustrate how healthy watersheds generate substantial, quantifiable returns that extend well beyond environmental outcomes. Case studies range from Alaska's $170-340 million in subsistence harvests across rural communities to Tampa Bay's $31 million in annualized flood protection benefits from coastal wetlands.
Fact Sheet: The Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds (2012) (pdf) The original Economic Benefits of Protecting Healthy Watersheds fact sheet (2012) highlights examples of the economic benefits of protecting healthy watersheds found in peer-reviewed literature and studies from the early 2000s.