Policy Development and Public Participation
The OWRB contracted with the Oklahoma Water Resources Research Institute (OWRRI) in 2006 to initiate an intensive policy development and public participation process. Local Input Meetings, or “listening sessions,” were held April through November 2007 at 42 locations statewide. The meetings were well-attended and drew a wide variety of comments on Oklahoma’s priority water issues and problems.
Regional Input Meetings were held during the second half of 2008 in each of Oklahoma’s 11 Council of Oklahoma Government (COG) regions. At these meetings, the OWRRI facilitated discussions among 340 appointed participants and additional members of the public at large about issues raised in the Local Input Meetings. The purpose of these meetings was to ensure that the full range of Oklahoma’s water issues--and eventual policy recommendations--were identified for inclusion in the final statewide plan.
Based on an analysis of the Regional Input Meeting discussions and comments, the following ten themes were identified for evaluation at future Planning Workshops: Balancing Water Supply and Demand, Water Conservation, Water Availability, Surface Water-Groundwater Relationships, Land Use Practices, Water Sales and Transfers, Inter-Governmental Water Resource Management, Inter-Agency Water Resource Management, Stakeholder Involvement and Conflict Management, and Consideration of Local and Regional Issues.
Planning Workshops, the third phase of the Water Plan’s public participation process, will consist of a series of ten planning workshops to be held June 4, August 13, and October 22, 2009, at the Metro-Tech Springlake Campus in Oklahoma City. The workshops will be organized according to five water supply themes in the morning and five water management themes in the afternoon. At each workshop, 20 participants have been invited to outline water management alternatives that will satisfactorily address issues, concerns, and suggestions produced by participants in the first two phases.The resulting recommendations will be the focus of a three-day Town Hall meeting in 2010.
Technical & Engineering Studies
Technical assessments and engineering studies supporting the Water Plan are being accomplished with assistance from various local, state, and federal agencies and organizations, as well as consultants. As a part of a Planning Assistance to States cost share agreement with the US Army Corps of Engineers, a programmatic workplan was developed to outline work to be performed subject to funding capabilities. Several other Corps cost share study authorities are also being used to perform additional technical studies. The engineering firm of Camp Dresser & McKee, Inc. (CDM), has been contracted to help coordinate this effort as well as identify potential strategies to conduct a statewide assessment of the state’s community water systems and their ability to serve both the present and future needs of Oklahoma citizens.
Provisional Statewide Supply and Demand Analysis has been performed to obtain county-level demand forecasts and supply availability. Consumptive water demand projections for municipal & industrial (M&I), thermoelectric power, self-supplied industrial (including oil and gas), self-supplied residential, and agricultural water use sectors have been estimated and are in the process of being refined through a series of meetings with stakeholder groups from each water demand sector.
Screening-level assessment of projected physical supplies are being developed and compared to projected demands through the 2060 planning horizon.
As a key foundation for the OCWP technical work, a Microsoft Access and geographical information system based analysis tool was created to compare projected demands to physical supplies for each of 82 delineated stream basins. This tool will assist with the detailed examination of demands and supplies, identification of areas of potential “wet water” shortages (physical supply availability constraints), and evaluation of potential water supply solutions. Developed to allow flexibility to perform a variety of “what-if” scenarios, the tool will provide unprecedented capabilities.
Watersheds in which demands are expected to exceed physical supplies will be identified, indicating areas of potential shortages (gaps) and a need to examine demands, supplies, and potential water supply solutions. For those areas identified as having gaps in supply vs. projected demands or that face other identified water supply issues, initial Water Allocation Modeling will be performed to gain a better understanding of the water management options in a particular basin. Such a model will allow for various inputs (availability, current water rights, reservoirs, compacts, rainfall/runoff, interbasin transfers, instream flows, etc.) to reflect the current situation within a basin as well as the ability to assess additional future demands or the effect of various water management policy changes.
Related and ongoing technical studies are being conducted in conjunction with the physical water supply availability analysis described above. These include potential constraints, challenges and opportunities associated with:
- Permitting and interstate compacts, sometimes referred to as the legal availability of water;
- Infrastructure needed to divert or produce, store, deliver and/or treat water supplies;
- Water quality factors, characterized as potential future constraints on the use of specific supplies for various water demand sectors.
In 2009 and 2010, causes of and conceptual solutions for identified water supply shortages will be investigated for use in the development of a “Basin Supply Fact Sheet” for each of the 82 OCWP basins. Provider-level analysis will be used to refine the Basin Supply Fact Sheets, which will include provider level water supply plans for the majority of Oklahoma’s public water suppliers.
In an effort to address key issues for the next 50 years of water planning and management in Oklahoma, the OWRB, in conjunction with the OWRRI and state universities, is funding research projects that will answer important questions for the OCWP. Three projects will be funded annually for 5 years for a total of 15 projects during the OCWP process. Nine projects have been funded thus far Additional information and project abstracts can be found on OWRRI’s website: http://environ.okstate.edu/owrri/project_funding.asp.
Groundwater/Stream Water Interaction Study
The OWRB is partnering with the USGS to conduct a statistical analysis of groundwater-stream water interaction. Through collection and study of various annual, monthly and seasonal flow data from selected streams and gages in Oklahoma, USGS researchers will determine information about a stream and how its flow changes over time. In addition to identifying trends, the data will also provide information on the contribution of groundwater to stream flow and the general interaction between the two.
Results from the study should assist the OWRB in future hydrologic investigations of stream systems in the state. Data will also prove valuable in gap analysis modeling that CDM will be performing as well as in the water allocation modeling that the OWRB and AMEC (formerly Hydrosphere) will be conducting.
Climate Variability Study
Given recent information about changing climate patterns, prudent water planning must include an evaluation of the impacts of climate variability on water resource supply and management. The OWRB is cooperating with the Oklahoma Climatological Survey to study these impacts, and more specifically, to ascertain a better understanding of the redistribution of precipitation to evapotranspiration, storage (soil moisture/effective precipitation), and potential runoff across Oklahoma based on 15 years of data from the Oklahoma Mesonet and associated data sources.
Not only will the study results increase our insight into relationships (or climate “signals”) between various observed data, but relevant baseline values will also be quantified for future studies and comparative analyses.
South-Central Oklahoma Regional Assessment
In May of 2009 the OWRB approved an agreement with the Bureau of Reclamation to initiate an assessment of the south central region of Oklahoma comprised of McClain, Cleveland, Pottawatomie, Grady, Canadian, Oklahoma, and Lincoln Counties, as well as the Oklahoma metropolitan area and surrounding communities. The area has a combined population of over 1 million people, which is expected to increase 30 percent by 2060.
Several municipalities, rural water districts, tribes, and other local entities have expressed interest in investigating a partnership for a regional water supply/wastewater system that draws water from various water supply sources in the area. Such sources include water reuse, desalination, surface water from southeastern Oklahoma, and the Garber-Wellington aquifer (GWA).
The focus of this particular study is on the GWA as a source of water for south central Oklahoma. The objective of the study is to conduct an investigation of the geohydrology of the GWA that will provide the OWRB information needed to determine the maximum annual yield of the aquifer based on different proposed management plans. Once a maximum annual yield is determined for the aquifer, the OWRB can assist local entities (including those wishing to form the south central regional water supply system partnership) in determining the most feasible water supply alternatives to meet area needs.
"Oklahomans demand a sound state water management program strengthened through the collection of accurate and timely water-related data, intensive studies of available water and future needs, and a defensible permitting decision-making process that recognizes both the inevitability of drought and need for water conservation."
Duane Smith, OWRB Executive Director |
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