We are a seventh grade science class from Woodbridge Middle School and we are participating in channel thirteen's Watershed Project.  We would like to show you what we have learned.  We hope you enjoy it.

The first thing we did when starting our project was research.  The first thing we had to research was "WHAT IS A WATERSHED."

We found out a watershed is an area of land that drains into bodies of water (lakes, ponds, streams, rivers, oceans).  Each watershed is separated from the next by natural boundaries (hills, cliffs, highlands, etc.).

Now it was time to find OUR watershed.  Sounds easy, but it wasn't!  Our area, Woodbridge, seems to be on the boundary of a couple of watershed areas.  This made it difficult because some of our information put us in one watershed and some in another.  Some websites show the watershed areas as "regions".  We decided, based on our research, that we were in the Arthur Kill Watershed (but we weren't 100% sure).  So, we asked an expert.  Mr. James Faczak from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection in the Division of Parks and Forestry confirmed our location.

That puts us here:

The Garden State Environet lists the Arthur Kill Watershed as a large drainage basin made up of the watersheds of three rivers (Elizabeth, Rahway, and Woodbridge), and several creeks.  It includes about 132 square miles.

This area is highly populated covering 2% of New Jersey's land but housing 12% of New Jersey's population.