Greenwood Lake is a 777 ha lake in the suburban New York metropolitan area. The lake lies in New York State (Orange County) and New Jersey (Passaic County) and comes under the jurisdiction of both States. The 6,000 ha watershed is 80 percent forested and 17 percent in residential land use. Greenwood Lake is a headwater of the Wanaque River in the Passaic–Hudson River Drainage Basin. The lake experiences heavy recreational use including boating, fishing, and swimming. Over the course of the last 30 years the lake's water quality has declined appreciably and recreational usage has dropped as a result. Historically, many different citizens organizatons have been formed to address the problems of the lake then gradually died. One major problem with maintaining an active and viable organizaton to coordinate and implement lake management activities on the lake is that the lake is in two States. Although a single lake and a single watershed, local parochial interests prevented coordinated action. In 1979 a group of citizens from New York and New Jersey formed the Greenwood Lake Watershed Management District, Inc., as a bistate committee to address problems of Greenwood Lake. Accepted by the States of New Jersey and New York as a responsible political organization, the GLWMDI applied for and received a grant under Sec. 314 of the Clean Water Act to carry out a lake restoration and watershed management study on Greenwood Lake. The GLWMDI has a 30-member board of directors, an executive director as chairman, and several hundred members. Throughout the 314 study volunteers contributed up to $100,000 worth of hands-on, in-kind services associated with the study. This contribution served as the matching funds needed to obtain the grant. Throughout the 4 years of its existence, the GLWMDI has unified the people in the basin into a powerful action-oriented organization with the welfare of the lake as its primary goal.