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While our lawn sprinklers are running keeping our yards green, Lake Hefner water level is dropping rapidly. Ugh.
There is 326K gallons in one acre-foot of water, I'm going to guess corn needs about 18 to 24 inches of water per harvest, or about 450-650K gallons per acre.
I think people have a hard time understanding the massive volumes of water creeks/rivers/farms deal with. How many gallons of gas do you buy a month? Maybe ~100 gal? How much water does the average house use? Somewhere about 8000+ gallons a month.
Looks like they are going to try for 2' of water again.
https://www.okc.gov/Home/Components/News/News/4256/18
Interesting they don't say how much the water purchase costs; or what does Canton do with the money? Road construction?
Okc pumps water from Atoka via pipeline its a 100 mile pipe. Also, further away is McGee Creek Reservoir on the same line. OKC could build a pipeline, but when there is the river (free) to get it here they'd just rather use it. A pipeline from Canton would be beneficial to both OKC and Canton. We would not need to pull as much water out as we do via the river.
Perhaps as long as Lake Hefner isn’t critically low it may be worth it to wait a little longer for a widespread rain event along the river basin, and release a larger amount then. I wonder if water loss would be significantly less?
Perhaps it's time to no longer issue pool permits and start permanent water rationing
Why? The water in Canton is available. It should be used before any kind of rationing. OKC planned ahead so OKC residents can have lush yards and gardens not otherwise sustainable in this climate. Canton gets a recreational lake for free which is usable most months out of the year. If we're taking water at this time, the fishing in October is going to be pretty terrible as fish are cold-blooded critters and in cold months they don't eat much, so consequently, the fishing isn't good. There's not much waterskiing or other recreation because it's too darn cold.
It's not as if water is a non-renewable resource and even when there is a pipeline, you take the water which gets to you because gravity over the water you have to pay for energy to pump to you up hill.
This thread is basically ridiculous. All this whining and gnashing of teeth every time there's water taken, which is only once every several years. This is especially dumb if you consider the alternative, i.e., there was never a lake in Canton. It's a man-made lake built to serve the needs of OKC--and when it's used as such, why is anyone surprised or even annoyed?
Your reasoning is that since there is water that can be used we should go ahead and use it on wasteful lawns and gardens? OKC will need to get used to less and less water being available to them and that includes using less water overall on vanity.
But I do agree that water should be drawn regardless if Canton wants a full lake. Canton only has like 500 residents which is basically a large apartment complex.
Posts like this are the reason that every aquifer in the mid-west is drying up
And certain moneyed powerbrokers can't afford to buy out the land from the farming interests that it would take to get the r-o-w to build such a pipeline or aqueduct
That would be a good idea. At no time this year has Hefner been low enough to be anywhere near worried about supply. In somewhere between '13 and '16 we pulled our last sailboat out just before there wasn't enough water to get her out and she sat on the trailer until she sold. That year you could walk from one shore almost at the east end of the main rows of slips all the way to the other shore on dry land. It hasn't been low enough this year for any of the slips to be completely unusable. Unless you have a fairly deep draft keel. The bottom of the older ramp was at least 50 feet from water.
On the contrary, OKC is about the gain access to a huge amount of water in SE Oklahoma and has its needs met for at least the next 50-100 years. There are, of course, always a bunch of chicken littles who have been consuming media about the Colorado River or other parts of the country which are really going through major changes because of lack of water supply. We, however, are not one of those areas.
I do have concerns for communities which are relying on an endless supply of aquifer water, but there's so much water available to OKC that I imagine selling water to those communities won't be a huge stretch, but man am I glad I live in OKC proper and not Edmond proper with that issue on the not so far horizon.
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