Prolonged drought aggravated by intense summer temperatures are affecting water supplies and suppliers in western Oklahoma.
The Foss Reservoir Master Conservancy District declared an emergency earlier this month which affected several thousand customers for almost a week.
The City of Hobart announced on its Facebook page the afternoon of July 12 that the Foss water treatment plant, located adjacent to the dam, shut down for emergency repairs. “Emergency water restrictions are now in place. No outside water use. Please do not water your yards, fill swimming pools or wash cars. We need to conserve as much water as possible.”
Customary water use was not restricted, a City Hall spokesperson said. “Laundry, dishes and baths were OK, but not anything that wasn’t necessary, such as washing cars or watering lawns.”
The restriction against watering yards wasn’t unusual. Each year the city imposes odd/even watering for lawns and landscaping between 7 p.m. and 9 a.m. beginning April 1 and continuing until Oct. 30.
Foss Lake is Hobart’s sole source of drinking water, and residents of the Kiowa County town depended heavily on their four water towers during the emergency, the spokesperson said.
The emergency was canceled six days later. “Temporary repairs have been made at the Foss Water Plant, restrictions are now lifted,” the City of Hobart announced on Facebook July 18. “A permanent repair will be done in the near future. We will post here and send out a text alert once we have a date.”
The Foss Reservoir Master Conservancy District is a wholesaler that supplies treated water to approximately 17,800 people in Clinton, Cordell, Hobart and Bessie, according to records of the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality.
Foss Lake is located in Custer County and is an impoundment of the Washita River.
Southwest Ledger made several attempts to find out what damage occurred and when permanent repairs are expected to be made, but was unsuccessful. The Ledger called the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Austin, Texas, Area Office for Oklahoma and Texas, placed three telephone calls to the Foss Master Conservancy District and left a message with a receptionist for the water plant’s manager, but the call was not returned.
The Quartz Mountain Regional Water Authority, a nearby water wholesaler, imposed water rationing at the board’s meeting last month.
The QMRWA provides treated water to the towns of Granite and Lone Wolf, to the State Reformatory at Granite, and to dozens of primitive and RV camping areas in the 4,540-acre Quartz Mountain Nature Park, which includes Quartz Mountain Lodge.
“We told our customers that they need to conserve water,” said Lesa Ward, who operates the Authority’s reverse-osmosis water treatment plant. “We don’t limit the amount of water we provide to our customers; it’s up to them to ration their water usage,” she told the Ledger.
Federal census and state Corrections Department records indicate the Authority provides water to more than 3,000 people. Those include 1,754 residents of Granite, 359 residents of Lone Wolf, approximately 1,000 inmates in the medium-security Granite prison, plus the Quartz Mountain Park, which has 150 service connections to the QMRWA and supports a summertime population of approximately 410, DEQ records reflect.
Granite and Lone Wolf have established even/odd day outdoor watering schedules and have asked their residents to conserve as much water as possible until further notice.
The regional authority gets its water from wells “around Lake Lugert/Altus,” Ward said: two at Granite, two at Lone Wolf, and two near the Reformatory. The water treatment plant is located approximately five miles west of Lone Wolf and about a quarter-mile north of state Highway 9.
Rationing is necessary because the groundwater table in the North Fork Red River Aquifer has dropped, Ward acknowledged.
The subterranean aquifer underlies Beckham, Greer, Jackson, Kiowa, and Roger Mills counties. It is composed of approximately 777 square miles (497,582 acres) of alluvium and terrace deposits along the North Fork Red River and tributaries, including Sweetwater Creek, Elk Creek, Otter Creek, and Elm Fork Red River.
The North Fork Red River is the primary source of surface-water inflow to Lake Lugert/Altus, which overlies the aquifer. Lake Altus is a U.S. Bureau of Reclamation reservoir, and its primary purpose is supplying irrigation water to the Lugert-Altus Irrigation District.