Lake Hefner at record low water levels, when will city buy Canton water?

[CitySlickR]

Well my fellow citizens I sadly see a lot of wasted water in our great city. Reading all these posts is interesting on both sides of this argument. I'm going to have to call it as I see it. Those people at Canton have taken a risk in investing for profit on a flood control water supply lake. So has the City of OKC and private businesses on Lake Hefner. Our tax dollars are being spent by the City of Oklahoma City on boat slips, running trails, and probably things I am not even aware of. So what is the difference ? Good grief quit bickering about it. Lets get to the water conservation plan mentioned last week at the City board meeting. If you are not conserving you are wasting.

[MarkAFuqua]

Well my fellow citizens I sadly see a lot of wasted water in our great city. Reading all these posts is interesting on both sides of this argument. I'm going to have to call it as I see it. Those people at Canton have taken a risk in investing for profit on a flood control water supply lake. So has the City of OKC and private businesses on Lake Hefner. Our tax dollars are being spent by the City of Oklahoma City on boat slips, running trails, and probably things I am not even aware of. So what is the difference ? Good grief quit bickering about it. Lets get to the water conservation plan mentioned last week at the City board meeting. If you are not conserving you are wasting.

Amen!

[Anonymous.]

Awesome, thanks for the photos.

[MarkAFuqua]

Exactly. Your entire acerbic eduction campaign is based not on facts, but on supposition and anecdote. Blind supposition and anecdote.

If you could do one thing to help yourself it would be to get armed with some facts, if you can find any to support your position.

Yes, my home and my business are in NW OKC. I probably live closer to the dry lake Overholser than you live to the dry lake Canton. I can see the dam from the street in front of my house. (BTW...All the water in Canton would have flowed through Overholser were it not dammed at Canton or redirected to Hefner. Overholser was built before Canton. So who's water is it again?)

Good point, I will work on getting some facts. Thank you. Darn you sending me back to google to look up "acerbic".... you should submit for the O'reilly Factor word of the day if your not already a writer for them... You have a fabulous vocabulary. I'm honestly very impressed. I hate arguing with people who are smarter than me, it lessens my chances of being effective. :-) Have a good day Jeeves. At the end of the day we are all Oklahoman's and I wish my fellow states people no ill will. God bless.

[mkjeeves]

Good point, I will work on getting some facts. Thank you. Darn you sending me back to google to look up "acerbic".... you should submit for the O'reilly Factor word of the day if your not already a writer for them... You have a fabulous vocabulary. I'm honestly very impressed. I hate arguing with people who are smarter than me, it lessens my chances of being effective. :-) Have a good day Jeeves. At the end of the day we are all Oklahoman's and I wish my fellow states people no ill will. God bless.

As dedicated as you seem to be to this, here's another suggestion. Take a clue from the Daily Oklahoman. Figure out what documents OKC may have that contain the information you want to know, like how much water we use per household, per business, how much can probably be reasonably saved through what conservation measures, etc. How much is budgeted for education about water conservation and where that money goes. What the plans would be if we had a critical shortage of water. They have done work on this in house and have hired consultants and the consultants have given them reports. Do a freedom of information request for those documents. They aren't going to do research for you but they can be required to give you copies of a lot of what they have. Plan to pay them for making you copies. Don't just do it to be a nuisance and waste their time. When you find out the facts, if you aren't satisfied they are taking the right approach, then what is the right approach? Maybe that's a bigger project than you. Get your community to help by hiring your own consultant to assist.

Or just make a bunch of noise, point fingers at everyone and have people give you little respect.

[MarkAFuqua]

As dedicated as you seem to be to this, here's another suggestion. Take a clue from the Daily Oklahoman. Figure out what documents OKC may have that contain the information you want to know, like how much water we use per household, per business, how much can probably be reasonably saved through what conservation measures, etc. How much is budgeted for education about water conservation and where that money goes. What the plans would be if we had a critical shortage of water. They have done work on this in house and have hired consultants and the consultants have given them reports. Do a freedom of information request for those documents. They aren't going to do research for you but they can be required to give you copies of a lot of what they have. Plan to pay them for making you copies. Don't just do it to be a nuisance and waste their time. When you find out the facts, if you aren't satisfied they are taking the right approach, then what is the right approach? Maybe that's a bigger project than you. Get your community to help by hiring your own consultant to assist.

Or just make a bunch of noise, point fingers at everyone and have people give you little respect.

Again, thank you. I will work on that and we have an entire team in place to do so. My last statement to you was very sincere, not meant to be snarky. That is the one thing I hate about the written word vs the spoken word, so much can be read into statements in type that was never intended. Have a good day.

[Jim Kyle]

At the end of the day we are all Oklahoman's and I wish my fellow states people no ill will. God bless.

You're not alone in being skeptical of any statements by OKC officials. They seem always to be saying what they think the public wants to hear, rather than trying to give us facts about serious situations.

As Jeeves pointed out, the water in that stream now known as the Oklahoma River comes directly from the dam at Lake Overholser, which in turn is fed by the North Canadian, which has come from Canton. Any statement that "no Canton water feeds the Oklahoma River" is obviously untrue on its face; the diversion to Hefner cannot prevent at least a few drops from moving on downstream...

And at least a little outdoor watering is necessary, even in winter, during these drouth conditions. Much of the ground beneath our homes is a clay composition that shrinks as it dries, causing serious foundation problems. My own rule is to watch the edges of the foundation slab, and when the ground pulls away from it, water the area to prevent such damage. Currently this amounts to one or at most two watering sessions per week -- and even so the ground shifts enough to cause a few difficulties with sticking doors as the slab shifts by tiny fractions of an inch.

I don't see my neighbors -- all of whom are on Hefner lines -- wasting water either. I do see city crews working to repair broken mains, however, and flushing hundreds of gallons of the precious stuff down the streets.

Rather than preaching to the choir, it might be more productive to organize a pressure group and lobby the state legislature to outlaw such agreements as those made by OKC. None of this effort, of course, will help the immediate future, but it might improve matters in the long term. Otherwise, those who refuse to learn from history are always doomed to repeat it -- and we've still got a way to go before we repeat 1936-38. Growing up in Elk City during those times, I never learned to swm; there were no pools at all, and no pet lawns either...

[mkjeeves]

The deal about the Oklahoma river might be factually true, but the end result is the same and it sounds like PR bull. They said water from the Canton release is not used to fill the river, only runoff from rains are used. That might be true, if it rains between here and Canton in the watershed that feeds the river below Overholser, or it feeds into Overholser and the water is flowed through to the Oklahoma River.

But if there's any water in the Oklahoma River that could have been flowed into Hefner, the end result is the same, we might as well have taken the water from Canton to fill the river. We don't know the answer to that. Could any of that water in the river be used for other purposes?

There's a gage just below the dam at 10th street that has data online at USGS. The actual flow through the Overholser dam gates might be available online too. If not, the city has that information somewhere.

[jn1780]

The deal about the Oklahoma river might be factually true, but the end result is the same and it sounds like PR bull. They said water from the Canton release is not used to fill the river, only runoff from rains are used. That might be true, if it rains between here and Canton in the watershed that feeds the river below Overholser, or it feeds into Overholser and the water is flowed through to the Oklahoma River.

But if there's any water in the Oklahoma River that could have been flowed into Hefner, the end result is the same, we might as well have taken the water from Canton to fill the river. We don't know the answer to that. Could any of that water in the river be used for other purposes?

There's a gage just below the dam at 10th street that has data online at USGS. The actual flow through the Overholser dam gates might be available online too. If not, the city has that information somewhere.

It would help if someone could shed some light on how many acre feet it takes to fill the river. It could be a number that is insignificant. I have no doubt that the river could be filled back up using spring rain runoff alone if the gates our closed sometime in the next month.

[Just the facts]

The old, "I'm not using it for that" excuse. Mkjeeves is exactly right.

[Snowman]

Snowman,
I have a serious question and I promise it's heartfelt, and I am seriously seeking knowledge on this issue and not baiting or arguing. You seem to have a lot of knowledge and facts about this from that end. You stated that you are into water sports and that you have been keeping an eye on Canton Lake level for sometime as it affects the mini lakes and river downtown that you use. In the video the councilman claims, and they all agreed that "Canton water doesn't go to fill the river downtown". I'm confused?? Do you think they are saying that "this" release won't go there, or what? I am honestly asking a serious question here, you know more about the details of what happens with the water once it's there than I do.

Thanks

When I first started looking into the upstream river, tributaries and lakes it was to see what was going on with the status of trying to improve the quality of the water (which has some room to improve) and if there was anything I could get involved with that. With the levels being much more popular than the environmental studies/reports they are hard to miss while searching the the corps website for new data even when that was not yet a concern. After a while I just started checking them too when I would look for updates, as the drought started/went on I paid more attention to all the lake levels that were any source of water for OKC and when it rained which catchment areas were hit/missed.

On some level their statement about it not used for the river might be able to be rationalized but I think it has flaws if it was meant to imply none of the water wound up there in the past, while standard operating procedure for releases does collect the bulk in Overholser and Hefner. From what I had heard the standard release from Canton comes in two waves, the first is a smaller flushing primarily to clean junk along the way and will not be stopped at Overholser, unless the rain we got before the release was considered strong enough to do that job I have no reason to believe the Corps of Engineers would do it differently this time (I would be surprised though if a city councilman did know all the details of how the corps of engineers did things though). While this would be a small fraction of the release, given there probably would have been just as much junk flow in from OKC's storm water system into the river since they want to time it with a heavy local rain to get a decent yield, I would bet they do not let it pass through the river dams and just run the boat on the river that collect floating debris a little longer. Also even if the numbers indicate that every drop could be accounted with local rain over a period of a month/quarter/year, there was at least one time I think in 2010 where there was at least 10% to 20% of the volume of water in Overholser was still from Canton when they refilled one of the river basins after a malfunction had drained it.

Since there has been construction soon to be completed in the east river basin, it is entirely drained and the city has stated that no water will be released from Overholser to either fill it or top off the others. With it being the lowest of the three river dams (which all have similar volumes) and it being the one used the most during the year, the plan is to move water from one or both of the other river basins that contain water to it and hope they refill with runoff.

For reference to some other posts, the entire combined volume of the all three basins of the river is less than the volume of one inch of depth at either Hefner or Overholser when near normal levels.

[Midtowner]

Rather than preaching to the choir, it might be more productive to organize a pressure group and lobby the state legislature to outlaw such agreements as those made by OKC.

Yikes no. Big cities have to procure water from somewhere. Canton, even without its lake can still water their yards and fill their swimming holes. OKC without Canton might not be able to do that. I think the legislature realizes that OKC and Tulsa need storage rights outside of their own boundaries.

[OKCRT]

Yikes no. Big cities have to procure water from somewhere. Canton, even without its lake can still water their yards and fill their swimming holes. OKC without Canton might not be able to do that. I think the legislature realizes that OKC and Tulsa need storage rights outside of their own boundaries.

Look,Ok. has many Indian Tribes. Can we not get some of these good folks to do a rain dance at Canton,Overholser and Hefner,throw in the river also. Some may not believe in these types of things but back in the day this is what farmers relied upon.

Hey,anything's worth a shot at this point. I would moon dance naked across the Overholser bridge if I thought it would do any good but since I am not Indian I don't think it would help. Prob just get me arrested.

I know this is a serious topic but folks need to lighten up. Spring rains are coming and lakes will be full again...

[MarkAFuqua]

We just aren't sure which spring...... :-o

[MarkAFuqua]

Yikes no. Big cities have to procure water from somewhere. Canton, even without its lake can still water their yards and fill their swimming holes. OKC without Canton might not be able to do that. I think the legislature realizes that OKC and Tulsa need storage rights outside of their own boundaries.

I don't have a problem with them having storage rights at Canton, I just wish there were some safe guards in place for drought conditions so that the lake could not be pulled to an unsafe or detrimental level. I wish that the contract was for 60,000 acre feet and not 90,000. If the last 30,000 acre feet could be left in the lake it would be better for all involved in the long run.

[Jim Kyle]

Yikes no. Big cities have to procure water from somewhere.

But organizing and maintaining such a pressure group would be "doing something" about the situation -- and with a legislature that seems unable to get much of anything through the stalemate between its two houses, the odds of getting any kind of measure passed, much less signed into law by the governor, are somewhere far south of those for winning the Powerball... Seems like it could be a win-win solution!

And, more seriously, such a group might be able to get a much wider audience for its message, than the handful of folk following this thread...

[Bellaboo]

Okay,

The forecast has about 6 - 8 inches of snow for the Canton drainage basin tonight and tomorrow. Not sure how much moisture it will contain, but it can't hurt.

[1972ford]

When are the gates at canton supposed to close?

[Just the facts]

Okay,

The forecast has about 6 - 8 inches of snow for the Canton drainage basin tonight and tomorrow. Not sure how much moisture it will contain, but it can't hurt.

Which will soak into the ground exactly where it falls.

[OKCRT]

Which will soak into the ground exactly where it falls.

That's the best time to take the Canton water!

[Just the facts]

That's the best time to take the Canton water!

Canton Lake is filled with ground water? I thought it was filled mostly with run off. It can take upto 20 years for ground water to make it's way to a spring.

[law]

Mostly run off. Built for flood control.

[OKCisOK4me]

Canton Lake is filled with ground water? I thought it was filled mostly with run off. It can take upto 20 years for ground water to make it's way to a spring.

That's too bad cause 20 years from now, this thread will be 1,680 pages worth of constant bickering.

[OKCRT]

That's too bad cause 20 years from now, this thread will be 1,680 pages worth of constant bickering.

Well if I am the OKC water dept. or whoever decides on taking our Canton water I would go ahead and take it right now while the ground is saturated with all the snow. Since OKC own the water and they are gonna take it they might as well fill Hefner up now. Kinda sad seeing all those sail boats docked with no water under them. Fill Hefner now and if we get a ton of rain this spring we can send some back.

[Snowman]

... Fill Hefner now and if we get a ton of rain this spring we can send some back.

There are not any pumps in place to send it back up in elevation to Canton. Unless you mean in bottles or jugs.