Residents told to cut water use

By Chad Previch

Published: June 15, 2006

Colbert latest town to set restrictions

COLBERT - More than 2,500 residents in southern Oklahoma have joined more than a dozen other communities in Oklahoma that already have been asked to ration water.

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The rate of rationing is the worst in at least a decade, said Monty Elder, spokeswoman for the state Department of Environmental Quality.

Customers in and around the small town of Colbert, not far from the Texas state line in Bryan County, have been asked to limit water usage to cooking, bathing and drinking because the town's pumps have struggled to find water in the Woodbine Aquifer.

The Woodbine is nearly dry from drought, Mayor Randall Gorman said Wednesday.

"The well's drying up," he said. "There's no way around it."

Colbert officials thought their water supply was from the Antlers Aquifer but discovered this week that they have been using the Woodbine Aquifer, a smaller aquifer that sits above the Antlers.

A company was expected to arrive Wednesday evening to begin drilling a deeper well.

Elder said the 14 communities have reported water rationing to the Department of Environmental Quality. The agency received reports of only three communities rationing water last year and eight in 2004.

Elder said it's rare for town wells to run dry like in Colbert.

"We sometimes don't realize how much of our daily lives revolve around having a consistent, clean water supply," Elder said. "Everyone needs to take this seriously and do what they can to preserve the precious water resources that we have."

The drought also is hammering the state's agriculture. Jack Carson, spokesman for the state Agriculture, Food and Forestry Department, said wheat, hay, alfalfa and pond water for cattle are disappearing.

"We are looking at conditions that rival the Dust Bowl," he said. "There for a while earlier this year we were even drier than we were during the Dust Bowl."

Water depths inside Colbert's 115-foot water tower had fallen to 70 feet Tuesday. At 25 feet, the water tower would shut off, Gorman said, and customers in a 4-mile radius would be without water.

The Chickasaw Nation delivered water in trucks that brought the level to 94 feet, Gorman said.

After the well is deepened, the water will be tested for salt, a process that could take a week, Gorman said. Pumps move the water from the aquifer to a treatment tank and then into the water tower.

The Water Resources Board has granted the town an emergency permit to pump water, Gorman said. The goal is to pump 200 gallons per minute.

The town's eight wells are now producing 12 gallons a minute, compared with the normal 80 gallons a minute, Gorman said. Long-term, the town will have to construct a holding tank or a reservoir and that would cost millions.

Gorman even had to padlock the town's car wash.

CONTRIBUTING: Jim Epperson III