The ACF River Basin is the drainage basin, or watershed, of the A Apalachicola River, C Chattahoochee River, and F Flint River, in the Southeastern United States.

This area is alternatively known as simply the Apalachicola Basin and is listed by the United States Geological Survey as basin HUC 031300, as well as sub-region HUC 0313. It is located in the South Atlantic-Gulf Water Resource Region, which is listed as HUC 03. The basin is further sub-divided into 14 sub-basins.

Geography

The ACF River Basin begins in northern Georgia and flows into the Gulf of Mexico at Apalachicola Bay, near Apalachicola, Florida. It drains an area of more than 19,300 square miles (50,000 km²).

Listing of Water Resource Sub-Basins

Water wars

These states and Alabama have been involved in a water-use dispute for two decades, known as the Tri-state water dispute. Georgia has also lobbied the United States Congress to end navigation on the Appalachicola and lower Chattahoochee, to conserve more water during droughts. Keeping the two rivers at a navigable depth during these times requires large releases from dams upstream, sending potential drinking water downstream for shipping, and often dropping lakes to levels dangerous to boaters.

A drainage basin or catchment basin is an extent or an area of land where surface water from rain, melting snow, or ice converges to a single point at a lower elevation, usually the exit of the basin, where the waters join another waterbody, such as a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea, or ocean. For example, a tributary stream of a brook that joins a small river is tributary of a larger river, which is thus part of a series of successively smaller area but higher elevation drainage basins. Similarly, the Missouri and Ohio rivers are each part of their own drainage basins and that of the Mississippi River.

Other terms that are used to describe drainage basins are catchment, catchment area, drainage area, river basin and water basin. In North America, the term watershed is commonly used to mean a drainage basin, though in other English-speaking countries, it is used only in its original sense, to mean a drainage divide, the former meaning an area, the latter the high elevation perimeter of that area. Drainage basins drain into other drainage basins in a hierarchical pattern, with smaller sub-drainage basins combining into larger drainage basins.