LAWTON — The Lawton Water Authority will receive $50 million in state aid for implementing the city’s drought resiliency plan.
The Oklahoma Water Resources Board approved the city’s request for a Financial Assistance Program loan during the board’s June 20 meeting, the agency said in a news release.
“According to Joe Freeman, chief of the OWRB’s Financial Assistance Division, the authority’s customers will save an estimated $3,557,400 over the life of the 20-year loan,” the agency said. “The loan shall be secured with a lien on the revenues of the authority’s water, sewer, and sanitation systems.”
The loan will help cover the cost of Lawton’s plan to provide the city with an alternative source of water in case of drought. The project will include drilling test wells and at least four groundwater wells, building a water conveyance system and upgrading the city’s water treatment plant.
“This will provide well water during a drought to supplement the lakes when they are very low for production of potable water (drinking water),” Lawton’s director of field utilities, Rusty Whisenhunt, said in an email to Southwest Ledger.
One of the wells and a pilot have been completed, Whisenhunt said. A pilot is a small, temporary water treatment system on site that tests different treatment methods.
“The test report will establish what the best treatment system to use in the full plant design,” Whisenhunt said.
The conveyance system and the water treatment plant upgrade are in the design phase.
The city estimated in 2014 that the project would cost about $42 million, but inflation has pushed the price tag up to about $63 million, Whisenhunt said. The OWRB loan will cover $50 million of the cost, with the rest of the funds coming from a $5 million federal grant and an $8 million grant from the Oklahoma Department of Commerce.
The Commerce grant was originally for $8.4 million, but the state’s administrative costs reduced the actual usable funds to approximately $8 million, Whisenhunt said.