Georgia water planning regions
Start with the county or source location relevant to your question. Then check the basin, aquifer and utility boundaries in the original document. A planning region is a useful entry point; it is not a substitute for locating the actual water system.
Find a historical regional plan
| Planning region | County examples for orientation | Historical document guide |
|---|---|---|
| Altamaha | Wayne, Toombs | 2011 plan |
| Coastal Georgia | Chatham, Glynn | 2011 plan |
| Coosa-North Georgia | Floyd, Whitfield | 2011 plan |
| Lower Flint-Ochlockonee | Dougherty, Decatur | 2011 plan |
| Middle Chattahoochee | Muscogee, Troup | 2011 plan |
| Middle Ocmulgee | Houston, Newton | 2011 plan |
| Savannah-Upper Ogeechee | Richmond, Columbia | 2011 plan |
| Suwannee-Satilla | Lowndes, Ware | 2011 plan |
| Upper Flint | Sumter, Upson | 2011 plan |
| Upper Oconee | Oconee, Putnam | 2011 plan |
| Metro Water District | Fulton, Gwinnett | Use the official region directory; no full historical Metro plan is included in this collection |
County examples are drawn from the official region directory, checked on 31 October 2026. They are not complete county lists. Use that directory's map and county lookup for a definitive starting point, especially for historical boundary questions.
Why ten document guides and eleven regions?
The historical collection contains the ten regional plans produced through the statewide council process. Metropolitan North Georgia Water Planning District follows a separate planning history. It is included in the statewide landscape and the historical highlights report, but a full Metro plan is not one of our ten recovered PDFs.
Four boundaries to distinguish
County: an administrative unit that helps locate the relevant council. A county total may combine users supplied from different sources.
Planning region: the area used to organize regional planning. Its name does not establish that all its land drains to one river.
River basin or watershed: a drainage area. Water and pollution can move across planning boundaries, so upstream activity can matter to a downstream region.
Utility service area: the area served by a particular provider. It may differ from both county and regional boundaries. Infrastructure questions often require this more local view.
An aquifer adds a further geographic dimension below ground. Check the relevant study rather than assuming its limits follow the surface boundaries.
A useful location record
When researching a place, write down the county, planning region, river basin or groundwater source, relevant utility or facility, and document year. If a report uses a named assessment node, include it too. This prevents a basin-wide finding from being mistaken for a result at every local intake.
See the source directory for maps and data, the document library for historical editions and the reading guide for interpreting findings.