LAWTON – A meeting focused on the 2025 update of Oklahoma’s Comprehensive Water Plan is scheduled for Dec. 11 in Lawton, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board announced.
The meeting will be held at Cameron University, 2800 W. Gore Boulevard, in the McCasland Foundation Ballroom of the McMahon Centennial Complex.
The meeting is tentatively scheduled from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. While anyone may attend, the OWRB requests participation from local officials, water utility suppliers, regulated industry, commercial agricultural producers, economic development entities, and representing organizations.
The water plan was developed by the Water Board and adopted by the state Legislature in 2012. It provides a framework for managing the state’s water resources.
Periodic reexamination of the document is critical, water officials contend, as concerns about water scarcity, population growth and environmental issues continue to increase.
Updates to the plan also have to address water infrastructure needs. Current estimates indicate lawmakers would need to spend $13 billion to renovate aging water systems in Oklahoma.
Water has been, and continues to be, a contentious issue in Oklahoma.
OKC water permit for Sardis, Kiamichi
Most recently, a lawsuit that has dragged on through state courts for six years – contesting a water-use permit the Oklahoma Water Resources Board issued to the City of Oklahoma City – was the focus of an Oklahoma Supreme Court decision issued last week.
Oklahoma City filed an application with the OWRB in 2007 for a permit to appropriate stream water from the Kiamichi River and Sardis Lake, which is fed by a tributary of the river.
This resulted in extensive litigation in federal court. But after five years of settlement negotiations, in 2016 OKC signed a historic settlement agreement with the State of Oklahoma, the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations, and the pact was approved by the U.S. Congress.
The settlement agreement contains, among other provisions, the consent of the Choctaw and Chickasaw nations to Oklahoma City’s water-use permit application.
In October 2017 the OWRB approved Oklahoma City’s application for a permit to divert 115,000 acre-feet of water – almost 37.5 billion gallons annually – from the Kiamichi River.
Seven individuals who own land or operate a business along the river filed suit in Pushmataha County against the OWRB and Oklahoma City one month later. Subsequently the district court affirmed the OWRB’s order that approved the stream water permit.
The state Supreme Court ruled on Oct. 3 that the district court properly applied the OWRB’s calculation of available stream water and evaluation of the beneficial use of the river’s water. The court also declared that the Water Board’s granting of the stream water permit to Oklahoma City “does not constitute an unconstitutional taking” of the protestants’ water rights.
Evidence presented at an OWRB hearing “shows there is unappropriated water in the Kiamichi River and Sardis Lake on an average annual basis in excess of the City’s application, even after existing appropriative uses and domestic riparian uses are considered,” the Supreme Court wrote.
Additionally, the court continued, during a hearing conducted by an OWRB administrative law judge, the seven petitioners “offered no evidence of a better method for calculating unappropriated water or specific evidence as to how their rights may be harmed by the granting of the stream water application. In fact, none of the petitioners presented any quantification of their riparian rights… Instead, they argue general harm without any specific supporting evidence, which is not sufficient.”
In a related matter, several years ago Oklahoma City officials and then-Gov. Mary Fallin squared off against tribal leaders over the sale of water storage rights in Sardis Lake, in Pushmataha and Latimer counties.
The Native American tribes wanted to be part of the negotiations, but Fallin, the OWRB and Oklahoma City officials resisted. The tribes sued in federal court and a federal judge ruled in favor of the tribes.
OKC drained lake in NW Oklahoma
In early 2013, during a period of drought aggravated by scorching temperatures, Oklahoma City drained 9.8 billion gallons of water from Canton Lake – 26% of all water impounded in the northwest Oklahoma reservoir –to replenish Lake Hefner, one of three sources of Oklahoma City’s drinking water. Sailboats were sitting in mud at Lake Hefner at the time.
A miffed legislator, former Rep. Mike Sanders (R-Kingfisher), wondered aloud, “Where is their water conservation plan?”
Oklahoma City owns the water storage rights to Canton Lake, which is administered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Canton, a Blaine County town of approximately 440 residents, relies on the lake for recreation and tourism purposes. However, in times of drought the Corps prioritizes drinking water needs over recreation.
Officials said it took approximately two years for Canton Lake to recover from the 2013 water release.
Texans eyed water in southeast Okla.
Later that year, on June 13, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously against Tarrant Regional Water District and in favor of Oklahoma over its refusal to sell water to North Texas. The high court upheld Oklahoma’s law that bars the out-of-state export of water.
The litigation centered on the conflict between Oklahoma statutes which, among other things, prevent state entities from selling water for out-of-state use, and the Red River Compact among Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas and Louisiana, which allocates the water in the Red River Basin among those states and was ratified by Congress in 1980.
Tarrant Regional Water District argued that the Oklahoma statutes violated the Commerce and Supremacy Clauses of the U.S. Constitution. However, both the trial court and the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed Tarrant Regional’s claims, and the Supreme Court declared that the Oklahoma statutes are not pre-empted by the Red River Compact.
High heat, low water
Water restrictions were enacted by municipal officials in municipalities throughout Oklahoma last year and again this summer because of drought and intense heat.
Waurika Lake – a source of drinking water for Lawton, Duncan, Comanche, Temple, Walters and Waurika – declined to dangerously low levels during a five-year drought before 26 inches of rainfall in 2015 replenished the lake.
With extreme weather conditions predicted to continue, concerns about water continue to grow. Although many officials believe the state has adequate water to meet demands, the director of the Oklahoma Water Resources Center told online media outlet NonDoc last year that Oklahoma’s water resources face problems.
“A lot of the water quality issues we see are with bacteria that comes from sewage and wildlife – those are key sources,” OWRC Director Kevin Wagner said. “Too many nutrients in the water is a big issue in the eastern part of the state because of poultry production in the Illinois River Basin. In western parts of the state, agricultural runoff contributes nutrients.”
In addition, he said, “There is a lot of turbid water in the state that is muddy due to erosion.”
Aquifers threatened by natural minerals, excessive pumping
As for groundwater, some aquifers are high in nitrates, and some have a lot of salinity from natural deposits in the western part of the state.” Arsenic is a naturally occurring element found in some parts of the Garber-Wellington Aquifer, which underlies Oklahoma, Logan and Cleveland counties.
Excessive water withdrawals have had a dramatic effect on the water table in the Ogallala Aquifer, which underlies an area of approximately 174,000 square miles in portions of eight states, including northwest Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming.
The Ogallala underlies portions of seven northwestern Oklahoma counties and all of the three Panhandle counties. Cimarron, Texas and Beaver counties.
An Oklahoma Water Resources Board map of wells drilled in the Panhandle shows literally thousands of wells drilled for domestic use, for irrigation of crops, for non-irrigation agriculture, and for mining (oil and gas production). One well in Cimarron County was completed on New Year’s Day 1907 – 11.5 months before statehood.
A report issued 14 years ago told of areas in Kansas where the water table had fallen by 150 feet or more, forcing many farmers to abandon their wells. Water wells in the Oklahoma Panhandle drilled to depths in excess of 300 and 400 feet are not uncommon, the OWRB map reflects.