{"id":25529,"date":"2015-11-19T14:54:39","date_gmt":"2015-11-19T20:54:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/?p=25529"},"modified":"2015-11-19T14:58:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-19T20:58:59","slug":"southwest-oklahoma-cities-turn-to-dredging-as-silt-slowly-strangles-lakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/11\/19\/southwest-oklahoma-cities-turn-to-dredging-as-silt-slowly-strangles-lakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Southwest Oklahoma Cities Turn to Dredging as Silt Slowly Strangles Lakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_25547\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25547\" alt=\"Dave Taylor, director of the Waurika Lake Master Conservancy District, checks on one of the water pumps at the lake's pump house, which send water to communities like Lawton and Duncan. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes4.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes4.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes4-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes4-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes4-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Dave Taylor, director of the Waurika Lake Master Conservancy District, checks on one of the water pumps at the lake&#39;s pump house, which send water to communities like Lawton and Duncan.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>Oklahoma\u2019s lakes weren\u2019t built to last forever. Over time, dirt and debris are slowly filling them in. Right now, there\u2019s no good way to solve the problem, but cities that rely on Waurika Lake are turning to\u00a0costly and complicated efforts to<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>save their water supply\u00a0from silt.<\/p><p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/w.soundcloud.com\/player\/?url=https%3A\/\/api.soundcloud.com\/tracks\/233815513&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=false\" height=\"150\" width=\"100%\" frameborder=\"no\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h3><!--more-->Forced to fight silt<\/h3><p>At the Waurika Lake pump house, loud green engines are hard at work pulling water from the lake and sending it along pipelines, each labeled with their destination: Duncan 1, Lawton 2. The water pumped here supplies a large swath of southwest Oklahoma. When <a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2015\/03\/11\/lawton-to-dredge-waurika-lake-in-latest-attempt-to-combat-drought\/\" target=\"_blank\">drought threatened<\/a> to drive lake levels below the shallowest intake gate, lake manager Dave Taylor found another problem beneath the water\u2019s surface.<\/p><p>\u201cWe couldn\u2019t open or close the bottom set of gates,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd we couldn\u2019t figure out what was going on. We found that we had about 20 to 23 feet of silt right up against the pump house.\u201d<\/p><p>Waurika Lake was being squeezed by drought from above and silt down below. By early 2015, the lake was on the verge of being unusable as a water source. Something had to be done.<\/p><p>This spring, the cities that rely on Waurika approved a $10 million project to replace pump components and dredge part of the bottom of the lake.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25534\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25534\" alt=\"A dredging barge scrapes the bottom of Wuarika Lake and sends sludge to a holding pit via an underwater pipeline.\" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes2.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"413\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes2.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes2-500x333.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes2-150x100.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes2-300x200.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A dredging barge scrapes the bottom of Wuarika Lake and sends sludge to a holding pit via an underwater pipeline.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>\u201cThis project lets us continue a vision that started about seven year ago,\u201d Taylor told the crowd<strong>\u00a0<\/strong>at the project\u2019s opening ceremony on Nov. 3. \u201cThat vision was that this region never again run out of water.&#8221;<\/p><p>Taylor stands in front of a 17<strong>&#8211;<\/strong>acre hole where silt ends up after a dredging barge drags the lake bottom and pipes it there. As far as dredging projects go, this is small \u2014 only about 100 feet wide and 4,000 feet long. It\u2019s the only dredging project happening in Oklahoma right now. But it likely won\u2019t be the last.<\/p>\n<h3>A (slowly) growing problem<\/h3><p><strong>&#8220;<\/strong>This is becoming sort of a hot topic,\u201d says Greg Estep with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. \u201cWhat are going to do with our projects once they start silting in?\u201d<\/p><p>The Corps of Engineers <a title=\"StateImpactLink\" href=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/2012\/10\/03\/the-barriers-to-another-oklahoma-reservoir-building-boom\/\" target=\"_blank\">built many of Oklahoma\u2019s major lakes<\/a> more than a half century ago. The waterbodies had projected lifespans of between 50 and 100 years before silt was expected to encroach into waters used for drinking and recreation. Estep says it could be another century before those lakes completely fill with sediment, but in the meantime, silt problems will mount, reducing the amount of water available for cities, recreation and conservation.<\/p><p>\u201cWe\u2019ve seen a lot of it on Lake Keystone,\u201d he says. \u201cTwenty years ago an area may have been able to support a marina. Now it\u2019s silted in.\u201d<\/p><p>But Estep says dredging isn&#8217;t an easy solution.<\/p><p>\u201cIt takes so much money, so much effort, so much time to dredge a small portion of a lake that it doesn\u2019t even generally keep up with the average annual sediment into that reservoir,\u201d Estep says.<\/p><p>Estep uses Eufaula, Oklahoma\u2019s largest lake, as an example.<\/p><p>\u201cJust to keep up with the amount of sediment that comes into Lake Eufaula on an annual basis, you\u2019d have to be running \u2014 I think it was about 3,500 six-yard dump trucks a day.\u201d<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_25551\"  class=\"wp-caption module image right\" style=\"max-width: 620px;\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-25551\" alt=\"A pipe deposits sludge into a 17-acre pit near Waurika Lake, where it will be left to dry. \" src=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes5-e1447963421406.jpg\" width=\"620\" height=\"401\" srcset=\"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes5-e1447963421406.jpg 620w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes5-e1447963421406-500x323.jpg 500w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes5-e1447963421406-150x97.jpg 150w, https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/files\/2015\/11\/PHOTO-DredgingLakes5-e1447963421406-300x194.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 620px) 100vw, 620px\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-media-credit\">Logan Layden \/ StateImpact Oklahoma<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-caption-text\">A pipe deposits sludge into a 17-acre pit near Waurika Lake, where it will be left to dry.<\/p>\n<\/div><p>The truth is, for now , there\u2019s really no fix to this growing problem. The Corps is doing studies, and hopes to make some recommendations in the not too distant future. Until then, communities and officials will have to face the silt situation in their own way, in their own time, like Dave Taylor at Waurika Lake.<\/p><p>\u201cWe knew we had about a year to 15 months worth of water left, and the project would take 11 months, so we got started just in time,\u201d Taylor says.<\/p><p>All the recent rain has extended that deadline, but hasn\u2019t dampened the urgency to stop the silt before drought strikes again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Oklahoma\u2019s lakes weren\u2019t built to last forever. Over time, dirt and debris are slowly filling them in. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":25534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[491],"tags":[610,423,427,636],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25529"}],"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=25529"}],"version-history":[{"count":37,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25570,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25529\/revisions\/25570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}