Water restored at Granite prison
GRANITE — Inmates at Oklahoma State Reformatory now have running water after more than a day with limited access to toilets and showers.
Service was restored Tuesday morning.
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections reported that a 250,000-gallon water tower at the prison in Granite was discovered to be empty Sunday night. Water towers are used to pressurize systems down the line.
Department spokesman Matthew Elliot said a leak caused the tower to begin draining, and several pumps at a municipal water treatment plant were malfunctioning and could not replenish the prison’s water supply.
As the tower’s water level dropped, so did water pressure inside the prison, causing every toilet to flush until the tower was empty.
The Oklahoma State Reformatory is a minimum-security prison that houses 1,042 men.
The Corrections Department provided access to drinking water with the use of two portable thousand-gallon water tanks and gallon jugs handed out to every inmate.
Staff who live on site also were without running water.
Hundreds of toilet flush valves will have to be replaced after sediment was pulled through the system when the water tower went dry.
In response to the outage, the department used the portable tanks for drinking water and gave each housing unit large trash cans to hold water for flushing. DOC reported that the kitchen didn’t lose water pressure, but paper plates were used to conserve resources.
Inmates on public works crews or food service were able to wash in the few showers that were operational. The 110-year-old Oklahoma State Reformatory is just one of Oklahoma’s aging prisons that need regular attention from maintenance crews.
Other facilities have had water problems in the past.
In 2016, the Lexington Correctional Center and Joseph Harp Correctional Center were affected by broken pumps.
A nearby volunteer fire department helped provide water to the prisons.
Then less than a year ago, two prisons in southeastern Oklahoma lost water pressure after a municipal line broke.