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Long dispute over Sardis Lake water rights settled

By: Brian Brus//The Journal Record//February 26, 2019//

Long dispute over Sardis Lake water rights settled

By: Brian Brus//The Journal Record//February 26, 2019//

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Sardis Lake in southeastern Oklahoma. (Photo by Mark Hancock)
Sardis Lake in southeastern Oklahoma. (Photo by Mark Hancock)

OKLAHOMA CITY – The city has signed off on an agreement with the Choctaw Nation, Chickasaw Nation and state government to settle water rights over Sardis Lake, officials announced Tuesday.

After years of legal fights and private discussion in executive session, City Council members unanimously approved the agreement without discussion during their weekly meeting. Assistant City Attorney Craig Keith said the Oklahoma Water Resources Board permit issued to the city in 2009 will continue to be defended in court, but that will soon be resolved and related lawsuits dismissed so that environmental studies can be performed and a new pipeline built to the city.

The root of the problem is as old as the lake itself, which has become a primary source of water in southeast Oklahoma. In 1998, then-Gov. Frank Keating was told by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the state had defaulted on a $27 million debt for construction of Sardis Lake in the 1970s. The state government staved off a lawsuit in 1997 by paying $1.2 million from the state’s Rainy Day Fund, but failed to follow up the next year.

By 2010, the state had found funds via the Oklahoma City trust’s offer to buy water storage rights to about 90 percent of the lake’s water for $42 million, pending approval by the Oklahoma Water Resources Board.

But in 2011, the Chickasaws and Choctaws filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma against then-Gov. Mary Fallin, members of the OWRB and Executive Director J.D. Strong, as well as the city of Oklahoma City and the Oklahoma City Water Utilities Trust over rights to the reservoir. Sardis happens to be under tribal jurisdiction according to original treaties, according to the lawsuit.

It wasn’t until 2016 that all parties settled on an agreement that allows Oklahoma to administer the water, but forces it to adhere to the tribes’ conservation standards and allows the tribes to be involved in technical evaluations in the area. Federal action was required as well: At the end of that year, President Barack Obama signed the Water Infrastructure Improvements for the Nation Act, which applied to about 20 counties in south-central and southeastern Oklahoma to help resolve such water ownership disputes and create a framework for future intergovernmental collaborations.

“Since then, the parties have been working together to … make the settlement agreement conform to the federal legislation,” Keith said. “It has been agreed by the parties to execute the conform settlement agreement on March 1, 2019 … to be forwarded on to the secretary of the interior.”

The process itself has been expensive. The state Legislature in 2017 passed a law that earmarked $2 million to the attorney general’s office to spend on the dispute.

According to city documents, the deal sets aside 20,000 acre-feet of water from Sardis Lake for use within the 10-county area surrounding the reservoir. That achieves the state’s goals of formalizing the OWRB’s role in water rights administration, city officials said, while creating an orderly system of water administration and resolving the outstanding debt associated with Sardis Lake.

“Further, the settlement agreement establishes the legal security of Oklahoma City’s water storage supplies and gives the greater Oklahoma City metropolitan area access to stored water for its future needs,” City Manager Craig Freeman said in a memo to City Council members. “Releases from Sardis Lake, including Oklahoma City’s use of its waters, will be governed by a system of lake level release restrictions based on the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation’s lake level management plan designed to protect fishing and recreational resources while giving Oklahoma City access to water.”