My father, Kenneth, worked in the oil field for close to half a century.
Most of that time, Dad worked for Phillips Petroleum Company. First in Oklahoma City and later, in a sprawling tank farm between Yale and Cushing, Oklahoma.
He liked that area because it was close to the Cimarron River and there, when given the opportunity, my father went fishing. If he wasn’t at the river, he visited ponds or lakes.
We spent a lot of time at lakes – Kaw, Keystone, and Texoma – there wasn’t a lake in this state where my father hadn’t fished.
And what he caught, he used. My family had many meals of catfish or sand bass almost every summer. Not only did we enjoy the fish but it was a treat for my father because he was the main source for catching those fish.
Things have changed. Oh sure, in some portions of the state, people still visit the lakes and a few still catch sand bass and eat it.
But today, sadly, those same people are putting their health at risk.
Lask week, a study conducted by Lake.com, a vacation rental platform for properties near or on water, examined polluted lakes in the United States. The study focused on the 100 largest lakes in the nation and examined their chemical data from Jan. 1, 2020, to July 15, 2025.
Then Lake.com pushed a list of the top 10 most polluted lakes in the United States.
The list included two lakes from Oklahoma – Lake Texoma and Eufaula Lake. Oklahoma and Florida were the only states on the list with two lakes.
And keep in mind that Oklahoma is in the central part of the country; most of our lakes were built by hand, but many of our lakes are dirty.
Look at Texoma. Located on the Texas-Oklahoma border, Texoma a massive reservoir covering approximately 89,000 surface acres (about 139 square miles). It features 580 miles of shoreline and holds a conservation water volume of over 2.5 million acre-feet. Its size and proximity to major cities like Dallas and Oklahoma City make it one of the most popular recreational lakes in the Southwest.
Sure, it’s popular, but it’s also polluted.
Texoma has received high total dissolved solids (753 mg/L) and high sulfate (164.05 mg/L) counts. In addition, Oklahoma has – for many years – struggled with phosphorus and plagues of blue-green algae.
It wasn’t that long ago that Oklahoma State University wrote: “Oklahomans are fortunate to have access to hundreds of public lakes and ponds and thousands of miles of shorelines. These water resources provide opportunities for boating, fishing, sightseeing and swimming, which millions of Oklahoma take advantage of each year. But these precious resources are under threat from merely unpleasant to hazardous pollutants such as nuisance algae, blue-green algae or unsafe bacteria like E. coli. In recent years, Oklahoma lakes have experienced an increase in blue-green algae (BGA) blooms.”
We haven’t cured that problem yet, and now summer is upon us.
This year, enjoy your trip to the lake but remember that there, in the water, could be a problem that does little, if any, to help you enjoy your time off.
Heavy pollution and issues like blue-green algae remain in our lakes and while this pollution won’t trouble my father, who died in 2017, the poor condition of our large bodies of water can cause problems for all those other fathers out there.
It’s time to clean up our lakes and streams.
I know, because my father would have been one of the first ones to volunteer.
M. Scott Carter is an award-winning political and investigative reporter with more than 40 years’ experience covering federal and state government and politics in Oklahoma. He can be reached at scott.carter@swoknews.com.