By Mike W. Ray of the
Southwest Ledger
The city manager of Hugo, the Choctaw County Board of Commissioners and all three Pushmataha County commissioners have declared their opposition to a proposed hydroelectric plant in southeastern Oklahoma because of its potential adverse effects on the quantity and quality of water in the Kiamichi River and other water sources.
The officials expressed their views in letters to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
Choctaw County Commissioners Jim Bob Sullivan of Boswell, Darrell Kerr of Hugo, and Roy Dean Scott of Fort Towson, were succinct in their one-paragraph letter. “We are strongly opposed to any hydropower facility on the Kiamichi River,” they wrote. “It would reduce the quantity and quality of the water in the river, which would have negative local environmental and economic effects.”
That river is “the main source of drinking water for Clayton and Antlers and several rural water districts,” Pushmataha County Commissioners John Roberts of Clayton and Michael Brittingham of Antlers pointed out in their Aug. 26 letter to FERC.
“We are concerned that the amount of water taken for the project [more than 118,000 acre-feet, approximately 38.5 billion gallons of water annually] will lower the water levels (and) contaminate the water with manganese and iron, increased sediment, and other impurities.”
The commissioners said they also have been told that “the completed plant would include methane similar to feed lots and further pollute our atmosphere.”
District 2 Commissioner Brad Burgett, of Rattan, told the Southwest Ledger that the only reason his signature is not on the Pushmataha County Board of Commissioners letter is because, “I wasn’t at that meeting. I was tied up working on a county road.”
The proposed hydroelectric project is “plumb crazy,” Burgett said. “It’s nonsense.”
Oklahoma City is “sucking Atoka Lake dry” and has permission to divert 115,000 acre-feet of water, nearly 37.5 billion gallons annually, at Moyers, he noted. “That’s water from the Kiamichi River and Sardis Lake that won’t be coming south,” he said.
“It is our belief that the current and long-term interests of the City of Hugo, specifically as they apply to both tourism and availability of water for current and future needs in the Kiamichi River, will be adversely affected by this proposed project,” Hugo City Manager Leah Savage-Thomas wrote.
Hugo, county seat of Choctaw County, has relied on the Kiamichi River as its primary water source for more than a century, since 1910, she wrote.
The City of Hugo “holds the #1 most senior water priority permit as issued by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board for the lower Kiamichi River Basin,” she wrote. In addition, Hugo “also holds an additional stream water permit for 28,800 A-F of water [9.38 billion gallons per year] for municipal and industrial, tourism, fish and wildlife, and commercial sale uses,” Savage-Thomas related.
“Extensive siltation into the northern reaches of Hugo Lake (near Carl Albert Bridge)” has “negatively affected” tourism on the lake because of its shallow conditions, “even when the lake is near its normal pool elevation…”
When the lake drops 2 to 3 feet, the upper reaches of the reservoir “give way to exposed ground,” which creates safety and navigation issues “for any tourism activity on the lake,” she explained.
“Look at Hugo Lake,” Pushmataha County Commissioner Brad Burgett told Southwest Ledger on Oct. 21. “You can practically walk across it.”
During periods of drought, tourism activity on Hugo Lake is “severely impacted,” Savage-Thomas said. “During such times, any significant diversion of water above Hugo Lake is detrimental to tourism and therefore to our already challenged economy.”
The Southeast Oklahoma Power Corporation’s application to take 118,000 acre-feet of water each year from the Kiamichi River “could have a detrimental effect on Hugo’s tourism and even its future ability to market water, due to low lake levels,” Savage-Thomas wrote.
Besides OKC’s future withdrawals from the Kiamichi River, coupled with the even bigger volume of water SEOPC wants to take from the river, one of the region’s largest industries, Western Farmers Electric Cooperative, also has a “significant” water storage contract with the Corps of Engineers “which could also be negatively impacted” by the proposed hydropower project, Savage-Thomas wrote.
Even though none of the land in the proposed SEOPC project lies in Choctaw County, it and neighboring Pushmataha County “are the #1 and #2 poorest counties in Oklahoma, according to average household income levels,” Savage-Thomas observed. Additionally, Choctaw County is “the only county in the entire state that has NEVER produced any oil or gas, which also contributes to the region’s very low income status.”
“The extraction of these water resources from Southeast Oklahoma to generate power for one of the richest regions in the nation – Dallas and North Texas – is unconscionable,” Savage-Thomas concluded.