Introduction
 Narrator
America’s fresh water supplies are in critical condition. The Environmental Protection Agency reports 40 percent of our nation’s fresh water is too polluted for swimming, fishing, and drinking. Even in the backcountry, it is no longer wise to drink untreated surface water.
Judi Li, Oregon State University
Watersheds are really made up not just of the streams, but the lands that surround them. So if we see tremendous degradation in our water systems, then it’s an indication of what’s going on on the surfaces next to them.
Narrator
Pollution from industry and sewage treatment plants is no longer the greatest threat to our fresh water supplies. The greatest threat is a result of our growing, sprawling population. Scientists call it "nonpoint source pollution,"but most of us know it as runoff.
Roger Wood, Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
Nonpoint source pollution results from all human activities in all watersheds. It’s not something you can blame on somebody else. You can’t point to somebody else’s activity and say that they’re the ones who are causing this. It’s each of us.
Narrator
We are slowly poisoning our waters and few of us even know it.
 Stan Gregory, Oregon State University
Each and every one of us live directly on a stream—when we turn on the tap, when we flush our toilets, when the runoff comes out of our storm drains—we are connected very directly and very immediately with that river and everything we do has an impact on it.
Narrator
It is a problem that could haunt our children, their children,
and all the generations that follow. Americans must now face the
fact that we all live downstream.
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