Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“A river should have water in it. It’s just natural that a river should have water in it at all times.”
George Tiger, principal chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation, commenting on Tulsa’s effort to get more water in the Arkansas River near its downtown
An effort is under way in Tulsa to put more water in the Arkansas River.
During the day, the river can be traversed on foot.
“In the daytime, it looks like a plains river, the kind you’re used to seeing cowboys ride their horses across in the movies,” said Don Walker, vice chairman of Tulsa’s River Parks Authority.
But at night, after 12,000 feet per second of water is released through the dam at Keystone Lake, six miles upstream, everything changes.
“From 8 p. m. to 2 a. m. there’s water in the river,” said Walker.
Many Tulsans want water in the river during the daytime, as well.
“A river should have water in it,” said George Tiger, principal chief of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. “It’s just natural that a river should have water in it at all times.”
The tribe plans to build a new 22-story, 500-room hotel and expand its River Spirit Casino on the Arkansas River in Tulsa. The $250 million project, to be complete in the spring of 2015, will be branded with Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville.
Designs unveiled at an event in Tulsa on March 19 showed the hotel and casino next to an Arkansas River full to the brim, according to an article in the Tulsa World.
“It would look better,” Tiger said of the river holding water. “Along the river-walk, there are restaurants with outdoor facilities. When there’s water in the river, it’s always nice and adds ambiance to the restaurants.”
In November, Tulsa County voters rejected the extension of a 0.6 percent sales tax that would have raised $749 million from 2017-29. Of that amount, $71 million would have paid for building a new low-water dam on the Arkansas River and renovating the one existing low-water dam at Zink Lake, about five miles north of the casino.
“We had hoped that it would pass so one of the dams could be down here in the area that we’re developing,” said Tiger. “We’re going to continue with our project with the hope that at some point there will be a low-water dam or some way to get water in the river.”
Tiger said he’s looking at other funding options now.
There has been a plan to build a dam just south of the proposed casino site for 10 years, Walker said. “That dam would create a three- mile lake by their resort,” he said.
Walker said he thinks success will take a combined effort among the tribe and the cities of Tulsa and Jenks, which is on the west bank of the Arkansas River, across the expanse of silt, sand and puddles from Tulsa. Neither of the mayors returned messages left at their offices seeking comment.
“Our citizens need and deserve that lake in the south part of the county,” said Walker.
6TH-LARGEST U.S. RIVER
The Arkansas River originates in the Sawatch Range of the Rocky Mountains near Leadville, Colo., and flows across three states before reaching the Mississippi River. The Arkansas River is 1,460 miles long, making it
the sixth-longest river in the United States.
In Colorado, the Arkansas River is known for its whitewater rapids. The river changes as it wends its way through Kansas to Oklahoma.
Walker said the Arkansas River is usually about onethird full of water in downtown Tulsa during the daytime. In the hot months of July and August, the river is about 20 percent full, he said.
“You can walk across it today,” said Matt Meyer , executive director of the Tulsa River Parks Authority. The river’s depth in downtown Tulsa varies from 2 inches to 6 feet in some pools, he said.
The most dramatic change in the Arkansas River happens south of Tulsa, where it intersects near Muskogee with the Verdigris River. The Verdigris is part of the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which ends east of Tulsa at the Port of Catoosa.
The navigation system created a minimum 9-foot-deep channel for barge traffic from Catoosa to the Mississippi River. The system includes 18 locks and dams that artificially deepen the rivers along the entire 445-mile route.
Bob Portis, director of the Port of Catoosa, said the port was built at Catoosa, rather than Tulsa, because land was available. A barge first reached the port in 1970.
“You couldn’t possibly buy enough land in Tulsa,” he said. “They found a 2,000- acre tract out here. You couldn’t find that on the Arkansas.”
LONGTIME PROBLEM
Historically, the Arkansas River flooded many parts of Tulsa, said Walker. Completed in 1968, Keystone Dam was built to protect Sand Springs and Tulsa from flooding, he said.
Water is released through the dam every afternoon to generate power for people at night, he said.
The times that Southwest Power Administration releases water to generate electricity vary, said Meyer.
For many years, the people of Tulsa have been trying to find a way to get more water into the Arkansas River.
“That’s our joke here,” said Walker, “‘How do you get water in the river?’”
Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett was quoted in the Tulsa
World article saying that sand could be dredged from the river and sold. That would help by deepening the channel in the river. But Meyer said that’s not likely to happen.
“Good sand coming down the river is all being trapped in Keystone,” he said of the dam upstream.
Meyer said he’s been at Tulsa River Parks for a decade, and people have been working on the problem of the water level in the river since before then.
Tulsa’s River Parks Authority is a city/county public trust in charge of managing the parks and trails along the river.
Walker said some people in Tulsa believe that the Arkansas River should remain natural. Others believe it needs two more dams, which would create a series of lakes.
Oklahoma City didn’t have a river, but city leaders had a channel of water cut through the downtown area, and that caused a “dramatic” improvement economically, said Walker.
“People are drawn to water,” said Portis. “They just are. They love water. They may not swim in it. They may not boat in it. But they sure do love to look at it.