Chickasha’s new water treatment plant will be named after the local family that’s providing the land on which it will be constructed.
The Erwin Family Waterworks will be built on three parcels totaling 70 acres west of the city’s aged water treatment plant, City Manager Jim Crosby said.
The Chickasha Municipal Authority will lease the land for a maximum of 50 years or until the death of Evie Erwin, “whichever is earlier,” the lease agreement provides. After her passing the land will be gifted to the city, Crosby said.
That provision “honors Ms. Erwin’s promise to her father that she would never sell the land,” he explained.
During her lifetime the CMA will pay the Evie Jo Erwin 2012 Revocable Trust $2,500 per month for the land, starting April 1. The CMA will pay all utility bills and taxes on the acreage for the duration of the lease.
The CMA also will spend up to $40,000 for a memorial in the lobby of the new water plant that will memorialize Ms. Erwin’s family, the agreement stipulates.
Freese & Nichols engineers and consultants expect to complete their design of Chickasha’s new water treatment plant in July, the City Council was told on Feb. 17.
F&N will submit their design for permits to the state Department of Environmental Quality in July, and bidding will occur between August and October, Professional Engineer Jason Cocklin said. Construction of the new facility is expected to start in October and will take approximately two years to complete, he predicted.
The treatment plant envisioned by the Chickasha Municipal Authority will be capable of producing up to 6 million gallons of potable water daily, with the ability to be expanded to 8 mgd. Production of 6 mgd “should get you out to the horizon, to about 2060-70,” Cocklin told the council last year.
Chickasha’s existing water treatment plant, which is at least 60-plus and perhaps 70-plus years old, is incapable of adequately treating water from Lake Chickasha.
The facility was designed to process 6 million gallons of potable water daily, but now its “functional capacity” is 4.2 million gallons per day to serve the 16,500 residents of Chickasha and the nearby community of Norge, former City Manager Keith Johnson said previously.
A loan of up to $72 million to finance construction of a new, larger water treatment plant in Chickasha was approved in July 2023 by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.
After subtracting fees for the project bond counsel, financial adviser and local counsel, the trustee bank, and the OWRB’s costs of issuance, approximately $69 million will be available to spend on building the new treatment plant. The loan proceeds will be coupled with $5 million in existing capital outlay funds, city officials said.
The loan provisions decree that the debt will be retired over a maximum period of 31 years.
Chickasha residents voted overwhelmingly in a special election Aug. 8, 2023, on a proposal to renew and increase a sales tax that’s dedicated to capital improvements.
Local voters approved a permanent 1.25% (one and one-quarter cent) sales tax that went into effect Jan. 1, 2024, replacing the city’s previous 0.75% (three-quarters of a cent) Capital Improvement Project sales tax that expired Dec. 31, 2023. Passage of the new levy resulted in a net increase of half a cent in the sales tax, boosting the overall city sales tax from 3.75% to 4.25% (four and one-quarter cents per dollar). Including the state’s and Grady County’s levies, the total sales tax bite in Chickasha is 9½ cents per dollar.