Our Natural Resources That Are Always There
The City of Tuscaloosa is fortunate to have multiple sources of water that provide both recreational opportunities and reservoirs to ensure that our ability to provide award-winning clean water is always there.
The City’s three main water sources are Lake Tuscaloosa (40 billion gallons), Lake Nicol (3.3 billion gallons), and Harris Lake (1 billion gallons). Harris Lake was built in 1929 to provide a new drinking water source for residents, and Lake Nicol was added in 1956 as an additional water supply. In 1970, Lake Tuscaloosa was completed, and today it serves as our primary source of drinking water. Lake Tuscaloosa is one of our community’s most valuable assets, with the capacity to provide up to 200 million gallons a day of clean drinking water.
Beyond drinking water, our lakes play another important role for our future. In 2009, the City designated over 1,800 scenic acres of land around Harris Lake and Lake Nicol to be conserved as park land in perpetuity to further ensure that our rich local resources are always there. This helps to protect our source water, and has the added benefit of creating vast opportunities for outdoor recreation on and around the lakes. For hiking, paddling, fishing, swimming, boating bird-watching and more, Tuscaloosa’s lakes have something for everyone to enjoy!