[upbeat guitar music] - [Cindy] Water connects you to everything, everybody and all these communities are connected through water.

It is an important thing to teach people that everything they do on the land is going to compromise water quality and their health.

Every one of us can make a difference.

And wouldn't it be great if we knew how?

[calming piano music] - [Cindy] Growing up in Somerset County was pretty special.

I was roaming the forest and building forts and really felt like, I mean, that mountain was mine.

In the early seventies, I moved to the Midwest.

When I moved back, eleven year later, things have really changed.

With every new home, there's an impact on the environment.

When someone pops a house on a field it requires a water supply, out here that's typically a well, which means the aquifer is being tapped.

It's important for people to know where their water comes from because it affects their health.

It is important to understand the connection between what you do on the land, how you behave in your own backyard or in your house, how it's affecting not just your water quality but Somerset County's water quality.

There is a very strong connection between preserving land and protecting clean water.

A watershed is an area of land that trains into a water body.

300,000 people depend on our water here in this watershed region.

However, another 1.5 million downstream and the more urban areas in New Jersey depend on the water that we're protecting here.

So it's very important that we're doing a good job up here because we're sending all this clean water downstream to support the rest of New Jersey and right out to the Atlantic ocean.

I think people would be surprised by the quality of water in our watershed because our rivers look pristine and people expect when they turn on their tap and they see the water is clear that it's healthy.

but there are a lot of things happening with water that can't be seen.

There's a lot of bacteria in people's water.

There's non-point source pollution entering the river all the time, and some of it comes from agriculture.

All our beautiful farms and landscapes are often polluting our rivers because absolutely everything we put on the land will eventually end up in the river.

Some of the recent storms we've had, like Ida, it was a big wake up call.

That climate change was very real in our watershed and that we needed to really be concerned about water quality.

You put it in an email and I'll, we will write it right now.

- Okay.

Okay, cool.

- Good.

- I work for a conservation organization.

Raritan Headwaters's mission is to protect the health of water.

We have probably over 2,500 volunteers a year.

- Sandy is working on a lot of ideas for press releases.

- [Cindy] We have a great volunteer core.

As far down as you can get, right?

- Yeah.

And I'm just cutting it all back.

- [Cindy] We have this amazing stream cleanup to celebrate Earth Day every year in April.

The stream cleanup is just such as great day because it's tangible.

When that team of volunteers walks away, they can see they really made a difference.

Our goal is to become a resource, share our expertise, make sure that the towns are armed with what they need to make good land use decisions.

We really have to be able to tell people how they can be better stewards of the watershed without intimidating them with acronyms and science.

We do well testing for communities and individuals because again, 80% of the folks living in our watershed are on well water.

We create these community days where folks pick up a well test kit and they're testing for coliform and lead, arsenic, all sorts of pesticides.

And we have our team there to educate people about what they might need to test for.

[calm chiming music] There's a lot of science to protecting land and water and there's a lot of work.

Wouldn't it be fabulous if our annual report card gives us an a plus?

That there are no pollutants in the streams.

[calm chiming music] Part of our job is to teach people about safer alternatives, using less fertilizers, taking back some of their lawn, and leaving some of the landscape wild.

I am very passionate about getting kids into the outdoors.

- Maybe the fairies actually play with us?

- [Cindy] Giving kids the opportunity to connect with nature.

We have so many kids in New Jersey that don't have access to a wildlife preserve like Fairview Farm.

About 1996, I created the Nature Education Program.

He's gonna set off the fairy crafts and you wanna catch fairies.

We've brought kids out from Jersey City and Newark in the more urban areas.

It is so important to connect kids at a very young age because after all they are the future.

They're gonna be problem solvers because we've kind of made a mess.

And I just think that you get very excited about things when you put your hands on them and you can experience them - [Kid] Okay, three, two, one, go.

- Poison ivy, leaves of green.

See three leave and leave them be.

On the trees, and on the ground, fuzzy things all around.

- [Woman] Yay!

[calming guitar music] - [Cindy] Where I live here, in Somerset County, does affect how I live.

It's kind of amazing that, if you walk to the top of this hill, you can see the Empire State Building.

Yet, here we sit with birds singing.

Got great parks.

People still ride their bikes.

They take walks with their dogs.

It's just magic.

I am a very lucky person.

At Raritan Headwaters, I would like to make sure that in my time we have made a big impact on these issues.

I mean, my dream would be that this watershed is a model in the nation that we are applying good science that we have citizens that understand how they can do a good job protecting their water supply, and land.

We have a vision that everyone has access to clean, safe water, everyone within our reach.

Wouldn't it be fabulous?

[calming guitar music]