Conserving water always important
Oklahoma is drying out a bit from another round of significant precipitation. A storm system Friday and Saturday brought snow to some areas and several inches of rain to others. In Oklahoma City, year-todate rainfall stands about 10 inches above normal.
To which we say, hallelujah! — while offering a reminder that this blessing will give way soon enough to the curse of too little rainfall. It always does.
It wasn't long ago that Oklahoma endured a five-year drought. In 2015, a cloudseeding company even tried to help make it rain in southwestern Oklahoma, so dire were the conditions. The skies eventually opened again and brought replenishment.
But dry weather returned — in 2017, wildfires burned nearly 320,000 acres in the northwestern part of the state. Lake Hefner in Oklahoma City was down 8 feet early that year. Twenty months later, the lake seemingly can't hold any more water.
Perhaps this good luck will continue for a while. But it's just as likely not to, and in doing so underscore one of the messages from a recent water conference in Ada. “We have been very blessed with it,” Oklahoma House Speaker Charles McCall said, “and we have to be very careful not to squander it.”
The five-year drought led municipalities to revisit their approaches to water conservation. Some cities, including Oklahoma City, implemented plans to reuse partially treated wastewater on a larger school. Others began looking for new uses of nonpotable water.
These are efforts that need to continue regardless of the weather forecast. It's incumbent on Oklahomans and their governments to promote water conservation, although recommendations are not always well received. We recall a water official from Marshall County speaking in 2014 about criticism of water use restrictions implemented there: “Try convincing some people that a green lawn is not a necessity and they will try to educate you otherwise real quick.”
Yet conservation is crucial, because as attendees of the Ada conference noted, water is so valuable here.
“When you think about water, it is either an economic stimulator or it is a limiter,” said Susan Paddack, executive director of Oka', the Water Institute at East Central University. “We cannot grow or prosper as a state or rural communities and water districts if we don't have a sustainable water future.”
As economic development director in Enid, Brent Kisling, now executive director of the state Department of Commerce, organized a consortium of area communities to produce a coordinated water plan. “We have to all work together, especially in a watershed, to make sure we are maintaining our water resources on the quantity side and on the quality side,” Kisling said.
It's good advice. The importance of judiciously using water is evident during dry times, but it's important in Oklahoma all the time.