Rivers
Georgia Rivers
When you look at a map of the state of Georgia, you notice mostly roads, right? Because most maps are road maps. But the interesting thing is that if you were to draw all the rivers and streams in Georgia in lines as bold as the highways on your road map, the state would look almost completely blue.
Do you want to find out more about the rivers and streams in your area? You came to the right place — let’s get started!
First, if you don’t already know which watershed you live in, take a minute to figure it out on this map. Click on the watershed you live in to find more information about it.
Georgia has 70,150 miles of rivers and streams that wind their way across the state. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that Georgia has 44,056 miles of perennial streams, 23,906 miles of intermittent streams, and 603 miles of ditches and canals. Georgia has 4.8 million acres of wetlands, 425,382 acres of public lakes and reservoirs, 854 square miles of estuaries, and 100 miles of coastline.
Georgia’s rivers are divided into 14 major basins and further broken into 52 watersheds. The words basin and watershed are often used interchangeably. Historically the word watershed referred to the dividing line between basins, but it is now commonly used to mean the same as for the word basin. The watershed or basin refers to not only the river but also all the land around the river that will drain to that river when it rains.
GA River Basin Map

Resources about Georgia’s Rivers & Streams
USGS Water Quality Samples for Georgia
Search the USGS database by Hydrologic Unit Code (HUC). The data is coded and takes some deciphering, but they have quite a bit of historic and recent data. You can also access several of the USGS publications by clicking here.
USGS Water Watch
Find current streamflow, drought, flood, & Past flow runoff data.
STORET (short for STOrage and RETrieval) is a repository for water quality, biological, and physical data and is used by state environmental agencies, EPA and other federal agencies, universities, private citizens, and many others.
EPD GA Adopt A Stream Data and 303d list link
126 South Milledge Avenue, Suite E3, Athens, Georgia 30605 | (706) 549-4508 (phone) | info@garivers.org