Oklahoma House of Representatives
January 13, 2004
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Atoka County RWD#1 to Connect
With Pittsburg County RWD#11

By MIKE W. RAY
House Media Division Director
OKLAHOMA CITY -- The National Guard is hauling drinking water to a rural district in southeastern Oklahoma that has been under a boil order for a year and may have to replenish its depleted reservoir with water siphoned from a nearby livestock pond.

As a consequence, the Oklahoma Water Resources Board approved an emergency grant Tuesday to Atoka County Rural Water District 1 that should enable it to connect with Pittsburg County Rural Water District 11.

The announcement was issued by state Rep. Paul Roan, D-Tishomingo, and Sen. Jeff Rabon, D-Hugo. "We appreciate the Water Board's quick response to this application," which was submitted to the agency just a month ago, in mid-December, the legislators said.

Atoka County RWD#1 was established in 1960 to provide water to the unincorporated community of Wardville in northern Atoka County, along with the surrounding area, records reflect. Chairman Roger Hatridge said the district serves 75 homes.

The district's water source is Wardville Lake, which actually is "just a pond" in the community that is recharged solely by runoff rainwater, Hatridge related. The reservoir covers perhaps three to five surface acres but is relatively shallow, he said.

The district has a water treatment plant that was designed to process approximately 12,000 gallons of raw water each day, but two decades have elapsed since the facility was upgraded, documents show.

Water pumped from Wardville Lake "goes directly through sand filters" at the treatment plant "and then into a clearwell," Hatridge said. "We don't have a settlement tank."

Under the best of conditions, Wardville water is characterized by excessive turbidity, murky from roiled sediment, said Stephen Hoggard, a district engineer with the state Department of Environmental Quality. To ensure public health and safety, the DEQ a year ago ordered the rural water district to improve its water quality and advised its customers to boil their water before drinking it.

Aggravating the district's problems with its small reservoir is the protracted drought in southeastern and south-central Oklahoma; rainfall in that region throughout 2003 was only two-thirds of the normal amount, state and federal officials calculated.

The effect of the drought on Wardville Lake has been compounded by the dilapidated condition of the Atoka County RWD#1 water delivery system. The district processes approximately 600,000 gallons of water each month at its treatment plant -- two-thirds more than it was designed for -- but bills its customers for only about 295,000 gallons,
Hatridge said. "We've been producing twice as much as we consume," he lamented.

"We have a lot of leaks," he explained. Some of the system's water lines were installed four decades ago, he noted.

A little over a month ago Wardville Lake was seven feet deep but only about 100 feet across, Hatridge recalled. State and local officials have estimated the reservoir contains at most a three-month supply of poor-quality water. Wardville Lake is "worse than low," Hatridge quipped. In late November or early December "we started sucking algae
and mud" into the treatment plant's intake.

Last month the National Guard began hauling potable water to Wardville in a "buffalo," a 50- to 100-gallon tank mounted on a trailer pulled by a truck.

Also, after he was informed of the district's dire circumstances, Atoka County Commissioner Lavaughn Henson borrowed some surplus fire hose from the Stringtown volunteer fire department to use as a makeshift water line. If it is deemed necessary, the hose will be stretched from Wardville Lake to a nearby livestock pond owned by cattle rancher J.V. Newberry. "I had talked to Mr. Newberry previously," Hatridge said, "and he offered to do whatever he could to help us."

Hoggard and Hatridge said Atoka County RWD#1 first considered extending a pipeline to Stringtown's water system. However, a preliminary engineering estimate placed the cost at approximately $680,000, because that solution would have required construction of several miles of 6-inch diameter water line plus various other improvements, Hoggard said.

Instead, Atoka County Rural Water District 1 plans to build a pipeline that will tie into Pittsburg County Rural Water District 11. Blueprints indicate three miles of 4-inch diameter durable plastic PVC pipe will be constructed, and a master meter will be installed to measure water usage.

The price tag has been estimated at $89,000, Roan and Rabon said. The job will be financed with the $75,000 emergency grant from the Oklahoma Water Resources Board and $14,000 in local funds, ledgers show.

The district will advertise for bids from contractors and start construction as soon as possible, Hatridge said earlier this month.

Charles Patton of Kiowa said Pittsburg County RWD#11 has approximately 275 customers in southern Pittsburg and northern Atoka counties. Most of those are residences but a handful are commercial customers, said Patton, one of the district directors.

Pittsburg County 11 buys its water from Kiowa, a town of 700 residents where the district headquarters is located, said Rep. Mike Mass, D-Higgins. Patton said Pittsburg County RWD#11 has a full-time maintenance man and limits its losses to within about 10 percent.

Kiowa draws its water from Country Club Lake south of town on the Pittsburg/Atoka county line, and has its own treatment plant. The five-acre lake has a normal storage capacity of 40 acre-feet, 13 million gallons of water, state records reflect. Country Club Lake, like Wardville Lake, is plagued by turbidity, leading to a similar edict from the Department of Environmental Quality to improve water quality, local and state officials reported.

Kiowa is constructing a new water treatment plant that will produce higher quality water in greater volumes than the existing plant can deliver, officials said. Kiowa's new water processing plant is expected to become operational in about a year.

Ultimately, Atoka County RWD#1 hopes to be absorbed by Pittsburg County RWD#11, said Hatridge. "That's what we'd like to do. We just don't have enough customers" to continue as an independent system, he declared.

"Those folks need water and we're trying to help them, at least in the short term," Patton said.

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