Quote Originally Posted by Dale Birchett View Post
I'm no inside expert on the city water supply system but I have heard the following:

The flow down the Canadian to Canton is reduced and I believe there is a dispute with Texas over their use of the water but it also may be drought related because Lake Meridith , north of Amarillo has had very little water in it for years;

Once the water gets to Canton it is "turbid" primarily from upstream agricultural run-off;

The agreement with the City of Canton recognizes the economic impact of the lake as a recreation area and makes allowances for protecting this income source;

It is correct that the dry riverbed from Canton to OKC can absorb as much as 80% of a water release;

The Water Trust doesn't like to use Canton Lake water for the OKC water supply because the turbidity makes the water more expensive to purify which leads to higher water costs for system users;

The pollutants in the water settle into the lake beds making dredging a dicey proposition;

There are plans to: add a second pipeline from Lake Atoka to Draper Lake, build a 'sister' lake to Lake Draper on the west side, & build a pipeline from Draper to Lake Hefner;

While Hefner is primarily a water supply lake, in the early 1940's salesmen went door-to-door in OKC selling bonds to finance the lake envisioned by the late Mayor (Judge) Robert Hefner who said he wanted to build a lake to answer the future water supply needs of OKC and to provide a recreational area for our boys fighting in Europe and the Pacific so when they came home they would have a great park to take their families to for picnics! (I'm paraphrasing because I don't have my copy of his autobiography with me.)

Is the Oklahoma River impounding water that could have been used in Hefner and Overholser? Probably.

Would the smart move have been to run the Draper to Overholser/Hefner pipeline from Draper to the Canadian/Oklahoma river then up the river to Overholser BEFORE building the string of pearls dams? Seems that way to me.

But let's face it, Oklahoma is in infrastructure cheap mode right now, as long as it's not MAPS, and these things cost big money. So the choice is with the consumer, to keep the rates constant you can reduce water usage and let the lakes fill or keep the current utilization rate and have low lake levels. Somehow I think the golf courses and lawns are going to win out over the recreational water users.
The Oklahoma River is downstream from Hefner and Draper so it has very little to do with these two lakes water levels. Even if it was upstream it would still have little effect since the volume of water it holds is nothing compared to these lakes. Of course, initially filling up the Oklahoma River when a dam breaks wastes a lot of water through evaporation and absorbition.