Oklahoma Water Still Cheap, Illegal

Irving has reached an agreement to import 25,000 acre feet of Oklahoma's wettest water from the city of Hugo via a proposed pipeline to Cooper Lake and on to Lake Lewisville. Hugo uses only about five percent of the 30,000 acre feet annual yield of its Lake Hugo, so it still has room to grow or sell a little more. Hugo will receive about $68 per acre foot, about $1.8 million a year. The city's budget comes to about $8 million a year and is in one of the poorest counties in the state.

Hugo is also applying with the Ok Water Resources Board to increase the permitted yield of the lake by 200,000 acre feet.

Stan Stamper, publisher of the Hugo Daily News, said the local business community supports the sale. He said the nearby rivers and their watersheds produce enough water to support 30 million to 40 million people. By comparison, the population of Oklahoma is about 4 million, he said.

"We have an enormous surplus of water that has been underutilized for decades," said Stamper, a member of a committee that studied selling the water. "That is a lot of water and it is being underutilized and the Metroplex is looking for water . . . and the chances of this part of Oklahoma going dry are virtually nil."

The Tarrant Regional Water Disctrict, gaining a competitor in the import push, says Irving is being 'reckless' and 'regionally nonsupportive'. TRWD, along with the other members of the North Texas Water agency, has unsuccessfully tried to negotiate a similar deal for the past few years

Why did that deal not go through? The same big impediment to this deal: Oklahoma requires legislative approval for any out-of-state water sales. Irving has agreed to fund a court challenge to the moratorium this time around, and the TRWD has a similar lawsuit pending in at the 10th Circuit in Denver.