Pennington Creek in south-central Oklahoma is the only source of drinking water for the town of Tishomingo. Residents there are worried limestone mining operations threaten the creek. Now, the city council is taking on the companies doing the digging.
The crippling five-year drought Oklahoma finally broke out of in 2015 is still fresh in the memory of the stateās water regulators, which is looking for ways the state can better withstand future dry spells.
It was just a few months ago when lakes across western Oklahoma were drying up, and the prospects for relief from five years of drought were desperately poor.
Cox, a Republican from Grove, envisions a much more grandiose, and some would say outlandish idea to solve Oklahomaās water problems for good.
The court was hearing an appeal of the limit from groups including the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, Oklahoma Independent Petroleum Association, Oklahoma Aggregates Association, and mining company TXI.
As StateImpact reported in October, determining the maximum annual yield (MAY) of Arbuckle-Simpson water use was a decade-long process.
Opponents of the move are continuing the fight ā in court.
StateImpact had never heard of the Garber-Wellington Aquifer. Neither had any of the half-dozen or so Oklahoma City residents we asked outside the Utilities Department downtown.
More farmers and new farming practices conspired to doom the reservoir. So why didn’t the lawmakers who fought for the project and the engineers who built it see the failure coming?
