About the Alliance

Our mission is to protect and restore state rivers through water quality and quantity policy advocacy, restoration planning, grassroots organizing, and watershed education in order to achieve clean and healthy watershed ecosystems, healthy people, strong economies, and a functioning democratic system of government in Alabama.

The Alabama Rivers Alliance was formed out of the efforts of its predecessor – the Alabama State Rivers Coalition.  The Alabama State Rivers Coalition was formed in 1993 and led by the Cahaba River Society, Alabama Chapter of the Sierra Club, Lake Watch of Lake Martin, Alabama Citizen Action, Friends of the Locust Fork River, and the Alabama Environmental Council.

On July 1, 1997, the Alliance started its first fiscal year operating without fiscal sponsor. Today, the Alabama Rivers Alliance has four staff, an OSM/VISTA volunteer, and an annual operating budget of $305,000.

Over the past decade, the Alliance has enjoyed multiple successes, but none alone. Working in coalition and partnership with diverse groups and individuals across the state has enriched the river protection movement, and grown our numbers to be a significant voice in the state. Some of the shared successes we have enjoyed include: 

• Assisted in building, uniting, and supporting more than 70 grassroots watershed organizations throughout the state.
• Worked with multiple stakeholders to designate some of Alabama’s most ecologically significant rivers and streams as “Outstanding Alabama Waters.”
• Helped form the ADEM Reform Coalition in order to forge a reformed state environmental agency that is run “for the people and by the people.”
• Implemented an acid mine drainage reclamation project in the Hurricane Creek watershed.