A soda can carelessly tossed on the ground probably will wash into a storm drain, meander through a creek into the harbor and end up in the Chesapeake Bay.

“The urban environment we live in is a watershed, but people don’t realize they live in a watershed,” said Kari Smith, a staff member at the Parks and People Foundation, a nonprofit in Baltimore.

Watershed groups joined together last week to address watershed pollution.

More than 125 representatives from organizations throughout Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., met at the Patuxent Research Refuge in Laurel on Friday for the unveiling of the Chesapeake Bay Funders Network’s Capacity Building Initiative.

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Five major Bay funding organizations will provide grants and technical assistance to selected watershed organizations to help increase their effectiveness, said David O’Neill, executive director of the Chesapeake Bay Trust.

“In order for us to clean up the Chesapeake Bay we need to be very serious about supporting organizations that are upriver and upstream,” O’Neill said.

Beaver Creek Watershed Association, for example, collects funds to clean up the creek and establish wetlands and buffers along its streams, he said.

The organizations may not focus on the Bay, but “they have a vested interest in the river,” O’Neill said. “By improving that river system you are ultimately improving the amount of pollution in the Chesapeake.”

The Jones Falls Watershed Association, a nonprofit that attended the event, has a stream-watch monitoring program in which volunteers adopt a quarter-mile or less of the stream. They remove trash and report pollution problems, said restoration manager Suzanne Greene.

The Chesapeake Bay Trust is accepting proposals for the Capacity Building Initiative through Feb. 16, with grant decisions announced in March. For more information visit www.cbtrust.org.

kvorce@baltimoreexaminer.com