{"id":13543,"date":"2013-03-28T06:00:19","date_gmt":"2013-03-28T11:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=13543"},"modified":"2013-03-28T09:35:55","modified_gmt":"2013-03-28T14:35:55","slug":"what-happens-when-water-systems-go-under-in-oklahoma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2013\/03\/28\/what-happens-when-water-systems-go-under-in-oklahoma\/","title":{"rendered":"What Happens When Oklahoma Water Systems Drown"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n

Osage County Rural Water District No. 9's water tower just outside Barnsdall, Okla.<\/p>\n<\/div>

Oklahoma faces an estimated $43 billion<\/a> in much needed repairs and upgrades to aging water systems across the state.<\/p>

“A lot of things were sort of overbuilt to meet long-term water needs,” says the\u00a0Water Resources Board’s Executive Director J.D. Strong.<\/p>

Ratepayers in small towns and rural water districts are hit the hardest<\/a> when new pipelines and treatment plants have to be built.<\/p>

There is help in the form of grants and low-interest loans, but sometimes even that isn’t enough and another, often final option comes into play: Consolidation, merging two or more water systems into one.<\/p>

It’s meant keep rates in check for customers, but the idea usually isn’t greeted warmly. Even so, consolidation is expected to become more and more common.<\/p>


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Oklahoma faces an estimated $43 billion in repairs and upgrades to aging water systems across the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":13561,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[504,427,93],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13543"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13585,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13543\/revisions\/13585"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}