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Watershed A island. Virtually all the major drainages have a combination of land uses. roaches In the search for solutions, officials, environmental- ists and some landowners are giving increasing consideration to an approach advocated in the 1972 CWA - establishing water quality protection strate- gies based on watersheds. The approach recognizes that the ultimate success of pollution control efforts will require coordinated action by all sources of pollution in a drainage area. It also recognizes that in many cases it makes economic sense for landowners to pool resources Efforts 10 combat !/onpoi1l1 source pollution have led 11/ore and more qfficials 10 embrace watershed !/ul/lagemenl - the control of pollutants throughout a riret's ('nIire basin. and control the largest sources of pollution first, rather than requiring each individual to clean up his discharge by a given amount. Urban residents, for instance, might be better served by paying to curb an unaddressed pollution source upstream than by trying to improve the efficiency of their sewage treatment plants. The concept raises some concerns in rural areas that the burden for cleaning up rivers will be shilled to them, reducing their future development options. Many small watersheds are dominated by one land use - logging in mountainous areas, agriculture in the valleys and urban development in the large coastal cities. But in California, no watershed is an 18 The Bay Area, for example, has had to deal with San Francisco's outmoded sewage system, which until recently spilled sewage into the bay during heavy storms. Refineries and shipping facilities on the eastern shore, old mercury mines in the South Bay, and agricultural valleys in the North Bay all are sources of polluted runoff. And those sources are in addition to the problems posed by city streets and residential gardens. But regional efforts to keep the bay clean and healthy also depend upon similar efforts in the Central Valley. Predominantly farm land but increasingly urban, the valley is drained by the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which carry polluted runoff toward the Golden Gate. Similarly, efforts to clean up Central Valley streams will have an effect on drinking water used 400 miles to the south; one of the costly challenges to southern California water purveyors has been to purify water diverted at the Delta. Watersheds also include groundwater. One of the most serious health threats in some areas is nitrate, a product of fertilizers, and animal wastes and improperly functioning seplic systems that leach through the soil. Nitrate in drinking water interferes with the ability of the body to transport oxygen in the blood and can be fatal in babies. Nitrosommes, a byproduct of nitrates created during digestion, also are a suspected human carcinogen. In other com. munities, cleaning up industrial solvents from the groundwater under closed military bases may be a priority for restoring the job-producing potential of otherwise valuable land. One innovative approach advocates the use of pollution credits - similar to the air pollution control plan in southern California - to encourage the most clean up for the least investment. Each polluter would be required to clean up a share of the runoff. but it may be cheaper for them to help stem pollution upstream than to do something about the runoff on their land. Taking a watershed approach to water quality problems in Newport Harbor has meant that yacht owners stop discharging waste and farmers upstream adopt new tilling practices to reduce erosion. In addition to these prevention efforts, settling basins were constructed to capture sediment before it entered the harbor. By reducing siltation, the natural flushing of the harbor has been restored. By limiting nutrients and bacteria, the flushing action