{"id":14810,"date":"2013-06-24T14:39:31","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T19:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=14810"},"modified":"2013-06-24T14:42:11","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T19:42:11","slug":"are-the-recent-water-resources-board-changes-fair-to-oklahomas-big-cities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2013\/06\/24\/are-the-recent-water-resources-board-changes-fair-to-oklahomas-big-cities\/","title":{"rendered":"Are The Recent Water Resources Board Changes Fair To Oklahoma’s Big Cities?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The makeup of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board will change<\/a> as current members’ terms end over the next few years. A new law<\/a> passed in 2013 requires that each board member come from a specific region of the state.<\/p>

The idea is for the rural,\u00a0agriculture-heavy regions\u00a0of the state \u2014 where the majority of Oklahoma’s water is located \u2014 to have an equal voice in the regulation planning OWRB does.<\/p>

That sounds<\/em> equitable, but the Tulsa World’s Wayne Green argues<\/a> the new OWRB membership rules are unfair to urban Oklahoma:<\/p>

<\/p>\n

One board member will come from Oklahoma County with an estimated 2012 population of more than 741,000 people.<\/p>

Equal weight on the board will be held by a member from Cimarron, Texas or Beaver counties – the Panhandle – with a total population of less than 30,000.<\/p>

In other words, as far as future state water policy is concerned, the interests of one Oklahoma City resident matters about 1\/25th as much as those of a Guymon resident.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Green doesn’t find the argument that rural areas should have more say because they use more water per capita very convincing either:<\/p>\n

That’s an interesting argument. If Tulsans want more authority on the issue in the future, they might want to all set their taps running nonstop and start triple flushing their toilets.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Previously, the governor appointed one OWRB member for each of the state\u2019s congressional districts, and four at-large members, for seven–<\/strong>year terms. Green reports those at-large seats “tend to go to people from urban areas.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The makeup of the Oklahoma Water Resources Board will change as current members’ terms end over the next few years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[444,427],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810"}],"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=14810"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14826,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14810\/revisions\/14826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}