By Michael Pineda
mpineda@cherryroad.com

In a move designed to secure the future of Ardmore and its citizens, the city commission approved a water rights purchase option agreement with Gene Travis Ritter III and Speake Ranch Trust and Speake Land Holdings, LLC in the amount of $25,000.

With the agreement in place, the city will drill test wells to determine both volume and chemistry of the water. As long as both are acceptable, the city will move forward with the purchase of water rights to 4,500 surface acres. Ardmore Public Utilities Director Shawn Geurin said the city has been working on securing backup water supplies to ensure water for the future generations of Ardmoreites.

“We have been looking around, trying to come up with some ideas,” he said. “We have looked at different possibilities. You have two options. One is you build a lake and or you find groundwater. Building a lake is very timely and extremely expensive. So, we thought our best option was groundwater.”

Discussions began during the debate over conservation of the Arbuckle-Simpson aquifer, which drew headlines a decade ago. Geurin, who had attended school with Ritter, saw him at a Noble Foundation function and the subject of purchasing water rights came up. That discussion ignited future talks that led to the purchase option agreement.

“We had budgeted some money, we had done a study,” Geurin said. “We had hired an engineer out of Durant, Barker and Associates. He had a subcontractor on the job who was a hydrogeologist. Those guys came in and did a study for us. They said yes, it appears the water is there. It looks like quite a bit of water is available. It should be good in nature.”

The water source is an aquifer that is located off Highway 53, near Mountain Lake. The city already has some wells in the aquifer, north of Lone Grove. While it sells water out of those wells to Southern Oklahoma Water Corporation, the new source of water would be purposed solely for Ardmore citizens.

“We are not purchasing to market these water rights out,” Gerin said. “We didn’t want to sit here and do nothing. We are very fortunate to have had Arbuckle Lake voted in by the citizens in the 70s and we acquired that water. We had Mountain Lake, Scott King, Neustadt and City Lake. At one time they were using the wells west of Lone Grove and at one time, much further back, there were wells on Caddo that were 100 years ago.

“But we knew at one point, Ardmore would have to start looking at an additional water supply. We didn’t want to sit here and not do nothing. We needed to start moving now. If you wake up one day and say, I have got to have it. You are probably too late.”

During negotiations, the city was intentional about keeping its interest in the water source close to the vest due to rising competition among municipalities in securing water. Geurin gave interest from Oklahoma City and Edmond in withdrawing water from the Arbuckle-Simpson Aquifer as an example.

“So, we were very nervous about letting the word get out that we were looking at this and considering it,” Geurin said. “We wanted to keep it under wraps until we could get the option agreement signed.”

Geurin said Ritter was both very cordial and professional throughout the process of negotiations. Should the test wells confirm the aquifer as a quality water source, the city would be allowed to draw two acre feet per surface acre. Two acre feet would be two feet of water per acre. The city would purchase the rights to 4,500 acres.

One acre foot of water is equivalent to 325,851 gallons. The bottom line is the city would have access to a total of 8 million gallons a day. It currently draws 7 to 7.2 million gallons a day from the Lake of the Arbuckles.

“You hear Mayor Sheryl Ellis say all the time, ‘Without water, you don’t have a community,’” Guerin said. “So, like I said, we are very fortunate the citizens made the decisions they did in the 70’s with Arbuckle Lake, otherwise we wouldn’t have a lot of the things we have now because we would not have had the water. But this will carry us into the future so Ardmore can continue to grow. The water will be there, and it will be available for the next people in line who will run the city.”

The post City purchasing water rights option agreement: Source could secure Ardmore’s future appeared first on The Ardmoreite.