Your plastic baggie will go through quite an adventure. It will travel down Little Hunting Creek, into the Monocacy River, into the Potomac River, and drop into the Chesapeake Bay. That all started with one small creek. Frederick County has hundreds of small creeks. All of these creeks are connected to larger bodies of water like the Monocacy river and the Potomac River. Whatever drops onto our streets and into our backyards will evertually end up in our watershed and affects the water that we need for survival, but also will affect the thousands of plants and animals that depend on this land and water for their own survival.

Examine the watershed map of Frederick County below. Take notice of how many different water sheds there are. Each creek, stream, and river eventually flows into a bigger watershed. These watersheds aren't just affected by trash (like plastic baggies), but also by everything we put in the ground. When we wash a car, the soap that we rinse away will go into the water. That soap will travel into the ground water, then into a creek, then into a larger stream or river, then onto a larger river, and eventually into the Chesapeake Bay. Look at just how many streams there are just in Frederick County! Each color represents a different smaller watershed, but each and every one of these streams will empty into the Potomac River.