This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Council for Watershed Health" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (August 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article relies excessively on references to primary sources. Please improve this article by adding secondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Council for Watershed Health" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (June 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Council for Watershed Health (CWH) is a nonprofit environmental organization in the U.S. state of California. It was founded in 1996 by Dorothy Green to preserve, restore, and enhance the Los Angeles and San Gabriel River watersheds. To accomplish this, it has brought together representatives from the regional water agencies (supply, groundwater, stormwater, water quality, and wastewater), as well as government regulatory agencies (federal to local); community and environmental citizen groups; and businesses in the Los Angeles Basin watershed.

The organization was originally called the Los Angeles & San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council.^[1]

The Watershed Council's Board consists of individuals representing state, regional, and local government; business; landowners (state conservancies); water and wastewater agencies; and non-profit community and environmental organizations. The board includes: the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Southern California Edison, the Southern California Building Industry Association, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, WSP|Parsons Brinckerhoff, The Resources Legacy Fund, San Gabriel Mountains Forever, Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, and the County of Los Angeles.

Major sources of funding for the Watershed Council include the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, County of Los Angeles Flood Control District, City of Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation, Sanitation Districts of Los Angeles County, United States Bureau of Reclamation, California Department of Conservation, California Department of Water Resources, Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, the California Coastal Conservancy, and the Annenberg Foundation.^[2]

The goals of CWH programs are to improve and expand local water supplies and reduce per capita water demand in the greater Los Angeles region; to increase the number of people, municipalities, and businesses that adopt and implement sustainable and water-efficient urban landscapes; and to provide science-based research to better understand trends and indicators related to the health of our watersheds and communities to improve watershed health.^{[citation needed]}

The Healthy Streams for Angelenos program monitors and researches watershed health, and works toward watershed habitat restoration.^{[citation needed]}

CWH works with water agencies and local community partners to develop "living laboratories": green streets, alleys, schoolyards and parks that build community capacity in local water sustainability and stewardship. Living laboratories help to determine how individual projects impact water quality, water supply, public health, and safety.

The CWH's five "living laboratories" are:

• Elmer Avenune Neighborhood Retrofit and Elmer Paseo Green Alley, a partnership with Los Angeles County and City of Los Angeles
• Avalon Green Alleys, a partnership with City of Los Angeles and Trust for Public Land
• Glenoaks Greenway, in partnership with City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles City Council District 2
• Partnership with Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) for the Drought Response Outreach Programs for Schools (DROPS)
• Marsh Park, a partnership with Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority

Among the CWH's activities and relationships are:

• The Water Augmentation Study (WAS) and WAS Technical Advisory Committee
• Los Angeles River Watershed Monitoring Program
• Disadvantaged Communities Outreach Evaluation Project
• Vice-chair of the Upper Los Angeles River Subregion Committee
• Membership in the Lower San Gabriel and Los Angeles and Los Angeles Rivers Subregion Committee
• Membership in the AB 530 Lower River Working Group
• Water Foundation Community Tool Kit
• Educational symposia and seminars
• Publication of WatershedWise, a quarterly periodical

• Index: Rivers and streams of Los Angeles County

• Harter, Rick and Rumi Yanakiev (2001). "The Los Angeles and San Gabriel Rivers Watershed Council" p. 20-21 in Conservation Geography: Case Studies in GIS, Computer Mapping, and Activism. (ed. Charles L. Convis, Jr.) Redlands, CA: ESRI Press. ISBN 978-1-58948-024-7
• Bullard, Kathleen (2005). "Riparian Pocket Parks as a Means for Physically and Conceptually Connecting People with Water." p. 309-317 in Facilitating watershed management: fostering awareness and stewardship (ed. Robert Lawrence France) Oxford, UK: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-7425-3363-8

• Official website