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

[Dustin]

Was just at Mama Roja's after driving around town and Lake Hefner was definitely getting the heaviest rain I've seen today!

[OKCRT]

Canton lake rapidly rising

[Teo9969]

Lake Canton at 40k+ Acre Feet of Storage for the first time since we drew in 2013. I have a measurement written down for 12/25/12 of 52,105. After the draw, the low was 24,793. Using the most recent 40,697 reading, we're still down about 22% since the draw. We've seen an increase of ~64% since the low.

If I remember correctly, after the massive rain storm that hit on the Friday after May 20th, Lake Hefner overflowed quite a bit. If we had drawn about 10,000 acre feet less, I feel like we'd be in a much better position. Hopefully next time we'll be a little bit more prudent with a draw. Really need to look at expanding Hefner's storage in the next couple years.

[Teo9969]

Canton lake rapidly rising

You gotta think with how wet that part of the State has been recently (which is awesome, btw), that Canton should be getting a lot of run off. It would be great if they could get about 4 more weeks of all this before the summer.

[OkiePoke]

Precip elevation storage


04/27 01:00 0.02 1603.37 38152
04/27 02:00 0.00 1603.37 38152
04/27 03:00 0.00 1603.37 38152
04/27 04:00 0.02 1603.37 38152
04/27 05:00 0.03 1603.37 38152
04/27 06:00 0.00 1603.37 38152
04/27 07:00 0.01 1603.37 38152
04/27 08:00 0.11 1603.38 38197
04/27 09:00 0.01 1603.39 38243
04/27 10:00 0.00 1603.40 38288
04/27 11:00 0.06 1603.40 38288
04/27 12:00 0.09 1603.42 38379
04/27 13:00 0.11 1603.43 38425
04/27 14:00 0.14 1603.46 38561
04/27 15:00 0.34 1603.55 38970
04/27 16:00 0.32 1603.70 39651
04/27 17:00 0.22 1603.85 40333
04/27 18:00 0.05 1603.93 40697
04/27 19:00 0.01 1603.95 40788

[soonerguru]

It's topping out over 1604 feet now. Conservation pool almost 30% full.

[Just the facts]

More dams, more lakes, make the lakes deeper? We can't keep the current storage capacity full, how on earth would increasing storage capacity help? If we made a new lake where is the water going to come from to put in it? We don't have too much water; we are using more than mother nature can supply.

[jn1780]

More dams, more lakes, make the lakes deeper? We can't keep the current storage capacity full, how on earth would increasing storage capacity help? If we made a new lake where is the water going to come from to put in it? We don't have too much water; we are using more than mother nature can supply.

It certainly wouldn't help west of the city.

[Just the facts]

One of the largest lakes in the state has never had water in it - Lake Optima.

[Rover]

One of the largest lakes in the state has never had water in it - Lake Optima.

Yes, this stands as testimony that even well meaning people and organizations who think they are smart and are using up to date accepted knowledge can make colossal mistakes.

[Bellaboo]

One of the largest lakes in the state has never had water in it - Lake Optima.

This is NOT one of the largest lakes in the state. Go check again, they have a large wildlife management area for birds, but the lake surface area is probably more like Lake Hefner if that much.

[catch22]

^ according to Wikipedia (!) it has never had more than 5% of capacity. Designed for 618,000 acre feet. Also designed to 120 feet deep in some areas.

[kevinpate]

Some might say they got a little over Optimaistic on that project.

[venture]

This is NOT one of the largest lakes in the state. Go check again, they have a large wildlife management area for birds, but the lake surface area is probably more like Lake Hefner if that much.

I think you missed the context of the post based on what Lake Optima was designed for.

[Stickman]

Lake Optima was a political boondoggle from the word GO. No comparison to expansion projects for the greater need of Central Oklahoma.
And yes water has been let go before on Hefner and many times at Overholser. We need more capacity, deeper, wider or whatever. OKC is way more than 350K population which is about when Draper was built. I don't condone wasteful usage but I'm also practical.

[Just the facts]

Kind of makes you wonder if industrial farming should be allowed west of I-35.

[Stickman]

Texas and parts of Oklahoma are definitely draining the aquifer. Just as California keeps adding people in a state that's predominately desert, farmers are finding a way to survive here. Not going to be a positive outcome for mother nature or man.

[BG918]

It certainly wouldn't help west of the city.

Any new lakes would be built SE of OKC or even in SE Oklahoma with water piped in. Look at an average precip map of the state to see why.

[jn1780]

Any new lakes would be built SE of OKC or even in SE Oklahoma with water piped in. Look at an average precip map of the state to see why.

Yes, I know. We have plenty of lakes in east Oklahoma. Have to get the permission to build the pipe lines first.

[ou48A]

One of the largest lakes in the state has never had water in it - Lake Optima.

^ according to Wikipedia (!) it has never had more than 5% of capacity. Designed for 618,000 acre feet. Also designed to 120 feet deep in some areas.

That’s not even close to the truth^… While living in Guymon I have personally seen Lake Optima nearly full on one occasion and I have been told that it’s been near full on one other occasion.

Its biggest problems are that it seldom receives any recharge, high evaporation rates, it easily soaks into the soil locally recharging the aquifer and there are problems with the dam its self that causes some leakage?

[ou48A]

Kind of makes you wonder if industrial farming should be allowed west of I-35.

^That^ is perhaps the craziest thought I have ever seen on any message board in my life….

Obviously the further west you go the more major farming becomes hit or miss… but it’s mostly hit and there are plenty of dry land crops that do very well west of I¬35 in our state and in Kansas and Texas too.

[OKCRT]

A few more rains this spring like the one Canton just got would go a long ways. The conservation pool is close to 29% full after these rains.

[gopokes88]

Kind of makes you wonder if industrial farming should be allowed west of I-35.

It's comments like this that make laugh when you say you are a Republican. Yeah the government should totally be allowed to tell people what to do with their land even if they aren't hurting others.

[Dubya61]

It's comments like this that make laugh when you say you are a Republican. Yeah the government should totally be allowed to tell people what to do with their land even if they aren't hurting others.

Are they not hurting others (or at least limiting their resources) if they drain the aquifer?

[gopokes88]

Are they not hurting others (or at least limiting their resources) if they drain the aquifer?

The doomsday predictions are really getting old. Remember the 70s? The earth was freezing, population was growing too fast, and we were going to run out of food. None of that happened. The invisible hand guides us. Technology has the potential to fix any problem.

Is charging more for water not a better solution?

There's a huge difference between the government telling a farmer this land you've been making a living on for generations (in most cases) you can no longer use because we the brilliant government, who screw up almost everything we touch, have decided farming here is no longer allowed.

Or the water you are using that is public utility is now going to be 15% more expensive?

JTF isn't a republican, the thought process isn't a republican line of thinking it's a leftist.

BTW the second is a better solution because now demand has been created to maintain yield with less water. Make a GMO seed that is more drought resistant and viola. Problem solved. Innovation takes hold, but it can't if the shortsighted iron fist of government crushes it first. Nearly everything, and with very few exceptions, the government touches creates more problems not less.