Alabama Water Plan

Current Status: In 2024, Alabama Rivers Alliance staff will be working to convince the Permanent Joint Legislative Committee on Water Policy and Management to begin meeting again and discussing water planning and management in Alabama. The committee was formed in 2008 and is supposed to meet every year, but has not met since 2014.

Click here to read the resolution about the committee. 

Alabama has more than 132,000 miles of rivers and streams, providing many important benefits. Our waterways are used for supplying water to homes, watering crops, generating power, and more. They also support activities like boating and other forms of recreation, and keeping our incredibly biodiverse ecosystems healthy. However, there are increasing conflicts between different ways we use water because more people live here, the economy is growing, the weather is changing and our major river systems are shared with other states.

As Alabama keeps growing and the climate changes, we will need to figure out how to ensure we have enough water for all these important needs and that it is clean, affordable and accessible to all Alabamians. How well we deal with these challenges and protect our water depends on whether the state agencies in charge have the right information, tools, and authority to manage our water effectively. Our state leaders must prioritize planning for the future of our water resources now and enact forward-thinking policy changes and investments in our water resources.

 

The Alabama Rivers Alliance has long advocated for a statewide Water Plan, and we continue to develop recommendations for strategically focused water policies that will move us in the direction of policies that will support a secure water future for people and nature.

Historical Timeline

Water resource policy and planning has a long history of stops and starts. Check out this historical timeline for more information on what the state has done up to this point and to further understand how far we still have to go to have an Alabama Water Plan!