Photo courtesy of Alabama Power
Alabama Power Co.'s environmental affairs employees work with anglers and homeowners on Lake Jordan in Elmore County to deposit recycled Christmas trees from Hoover, Alabama, in the lake on April 8, 2025.
The city of Hoover’s partnership with Alabama Power on a project to recycle live Christmas trees is paying dividends for fish in various lakes, Alabama Power officials say.
Within the past couple of months, Alabama Power has taken about 200 Christmas trees collected mostly in Hoover after this past Christmas and deposited them in Lake Jordan in Elmore County and Lake Mitchell in Chilton County, the power company said.
The trees are being used to enhance fish habitats in the lakes.
"Fish habitats can degrade and disappear over time," said Mike Clelland, an environmental affairs specialist with Alabama Power. “This project helps maintain a healthy environment for the fish.”
The process is simple and effective, power company officials said. Trees are bundled together in groups of four, loaded onto boats and then submerged at various locations around the lake. One tree from each bundle is also tied to a small floatation device to ensure that it sits upright on the lake floor, providing even more coverage for fish.
Anglers and members of the Lake Jordan Homeowners and Boatowners Association helped select the locations there, potentially creating new spawning grounds. Some fish species use underwater trees, submerged branches or other types of underwater vegetation for spawning. These structures provide shelter and protection for eggs and juvenile fish from predators. Fish can also attach their eggs to the trunks or branches of these Christmas trees, creating a more stable environment.
"After we sink the trees, we mark them via GPS and make this information available on our Shorelines website and app for the public to access,” Clelland said. “For Lake Jordan alone, we are sinking over 100 trees in six different locations.”
About 100 trees also were dropped into Lake Mitchell in April, with the group launching from the Higgins Ferry Boat Ramp in Clanton.
This past year, the collection point in Hoover was a small parking lot just east of the Hoover Public Library at 300 Municipal Lane.
Alabama Power has been repurposing Christmas trees as fish-attracting devices in its reservoirs since 1993 and has recycled more than 60,000 trees in that time, the company said.
