A watershed approach provides an effective framework for dealing with water resources challenges. Watersheds provide drinking water, recreation, and ecological habitat, as well as a place for waste disposal, a source of industrial cooling water, and navigable inland water transport. Consequently, much depends on the health of watersheds. Watersheds are threatened by wastewater and nonpoint source runoff that load surface waters with excess organic matter, nutrients, pathogens, solids, and toxic substances. Physical alterations, such as paving and stream channelization, change both the hydrologic regime and habitat. Estuaries are of particular importance, since they have great economic, ecological, recreational, and aesthetic value. An approach to the protection, management, and restoration of these water resources in the United States, and the respective roles of federal, state, and local governments, as well as the private sector and volunteer groups, is discussed. Protecting and sustaining watersheds requires that water resource goals be prioritized within a coordinating framework.