Download 151021_Clinton_Overview_Script

EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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10/21/15
Video
TEXT ID:
Mark Skiles
City Manager
Clinton, OK
Audio
SKILES: Clinton is an oil based/agricultural
economy in western Oklahoma. …. a resilient
community populated by people that believe
in themselves, believe in this community, and
they're here to stay.
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Brian Meier
Project Manager - Burns &
McDonnell, Clinton Project
Clinton, OK
MEIER: Historically, Clinton's had two
different water supply sources. Today, we're
at Clinton Lake, which is one of the primary
sources. The other source was Foss Reservoir.
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Rodney Serfoss
Editor and Publisher
Clinton Daily News
SERFOSS: When you to talk to so many of the
old farmers around here, they would describe
a typical year in western Oklahoma as a
drought, a flood, and a drought. Western
Oklahoma is dry. It always has been. And yet
we've never seen a prolonged drought, or not
in my lifetime.
SKILES: Well, this recent drought really began
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back in 2011, and there were two years of
let's call it "no rain, " because that's what it
was.
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TEXT ID:
Jeremy Brush
Project Manager, Severn Trent
Services, Clinton Project
Clinton, OK
BRUSH: In 2011, they received less than two
inches of rainfall for the spring, and then we
turned around and had only one inch of
rainfall that fall, which really was the biggest
impacting year of the drought.
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SKILES: During that time period, Clinton Lake
dried up to the point that there was no water
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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10/21/15
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being supplied to Clinton from Lake Clinton.
NARRATOR V/O: Once they lost Clinton Lake
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in October, 2011, the city relied on their
interconnection with Foss Reservoir as their
primary source, until the unthinkable
happened…they were losing that supply too.
MEIER: …Clinton Lake was already offline
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due to low water levels within the lake. In
addition to that, Foss was also declining
rapidly.
SERFOSS: we'd always been taught out here
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that Foss was that unlimited supply of water.
… We could never pull it dry.
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EPA Branded Statement
NARRATOR V/O: EPA engaged several small
to medium-sized drought-impacted utilities to
identify lessons learned and outline effective
strategies to increase resilience to drought.
For Clinton … this meant finding more raw
water to treat, regardless of its quality.
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TITLE GRAPHICS
Drought Response and Recovery
City of Clinton
Clinton, OK
NARRATOR V/O:
Drought Response and Recovery
City of Clinton
Clinton, Oklahoma
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SKILES: As far as the sources of water, we
were lulled into a false sense of security.
…Well, two years of the drought taught us just
how sensitive the surface water is in our area.
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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10/21/15
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Audio
SERFOSS: So then the reality started setting
in, but we always had the mindset of you can
go out here anywhere and drill a well and find
water. Well, yeah, you can, but five gallons a
minute, ten gallons a minute doesn't solve the
problem that we had. I think the thing that
weighed on people's minds is we thought we
could go in and find one deal that would just
cure everything. It's not there anymore.
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NARRATOR V/O: With their primary source
depleted, and secondary source dwindling
rapidly, the City of Clinton took action and
implemented water restrictions,
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MEIER: City of Clinton really stepped up and
took a lot of significant conservation
measures, so the impact was felt throughout
the community...
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BRUSH: Before the drought, the water
demand for Clinton on an average basis was
about three million gallons a day for the year.
During the drought between 2011 and 2014,
we reduced the overall demand in town by
restrictions all the way down to one and a half
million gallons a day.
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NARRATOR V/O: Limited supplies, however,
also created challenges in maintaining quality
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SKILES: As Foss began to fall during that four
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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Video
10/21/15
Audio
year period, the water gets much harder,
much harder to treat.
BRUSH: Operationally, the water treatment
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facility was constantly having to be adjusted
just to be able to meet water quality
standards.
BRUSH: The distribution system during the
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summer time had a long detention time
because of the drought and because of the
water restrictions. And the chlorine residuals,
we had a hard time maintaining above the 1.0
chlorine residual that's required by the state.
So it actually required flushing when we
didn't have enough water to even keep the
towers full to begin with just to maintain safe
drinking water in the distribution system.
NARRATOR V/O: As the drought continued,
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the city solicited proposals from multiple
engineering firms trying to find the right
solution
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TEXT ID:
Don Rodolph
City Council
Clinton, OK
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RODOLPH: I think we went through three
engineering firms before we ended up with
Burns & McDonnell, …
MEIER: The focus of the project was to
develop an additional source of supply…
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MEIER: As the project evolved, it fairly quickly
pointed to an additional groundwater sources
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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of supply. That's where we're at today is the
primary development of several groundwater
wells, treatment of that groundwater, and
then incorporation into the public water
supply system.
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RODOLPH: Once the engineers made the
presentation and we decided what we would
do for water, we had to figure out how to pay
for it.
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SKILES: ……the city of Clinton issued $29.5
million in bonds. Those moneys generated
from those bonds are going to be utilized to
complete wells, to put pipelines in and to
install a reverse osmosis plant.
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SKILES: In January 2015, the water rates
were increased by 49% at one time to help
pay for this. April 7, we went to a vote of the
people on two sales taxes that the revenues
generated from those sales taxes are
earmarked for the repayment of those bonds.
They passed by over 90%.
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SERFOSS: Nobody wants to see their water
bills go up. But they saw the necessity of it and
overwhelmingly supported it.
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NARRATOR V/O: With funding and a plan in
place, Clinton had one more hurdle to
overcome…what to do with the wastewater,
also known as reject water, from the proposed
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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reverse osmosis plant.
MEIER: Any time you integrate a new source
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of supply into a community's water utility,
there's going to be challenges.
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TEXT ID:
Saba Tahmassebi
Agency Chief Engineer
Oklahoma Department of
Environmental Quality
TAHMASSEBI: The problem is that because of
the drought, because it didn't rain for so long
the flow of water in surface streams was very
low so the reject from the drinking water
plant couldn't be discharged into the streams
because it was too concentrated and the flow
of water in the streams was too low so there
wasn't enough dilution. So that was a huge
issue.
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NARRATOR V/O: The City worked with the
Oklahoma Department of Environmental
Quality, to come up with a unique solution to
dispose of their reject water.
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TAHMASSEBI: …we thought that the best way
to handle this is through injection wells.
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SKILES: We are the first community in the
state of Oklahoma that is going to install an
injection well for the waste stream that will
come from that plant.
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NARRATOR V/O: Moving forward, the City of
Clinton will work to bring the new wells and
treatment plant on-line to better secure their
water supply for the future.
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EPA Drought Response and Recovery
Clinton, OK – Overview Video
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10/21/15
Video
Dawn Hoggard
District Engineer
Oklahoma Department of
Environmental Quality
Audio
HOGGARD: Clinton's not stopping here. They
are going to continue looking for groundwater
in the future…. I think their feeling…. is it's not
safe to rely on surface water because you
don't know when it's going to rain again.
SKILES: You always have to look forward
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when it comes to water. Never quit. Never
assume that you have enough, because you
don't.
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TRANSITION
Ending Branding Graphic
w/EPA Seal and URL
www.epa.gov/
waterutilityresponse
NARRATOR V/O: Explore EPA’s Drought
Response and Recovery Guide for additional
ways to make your utility more drought
resilient at:
W-W-W dot E-P-A dot Gov slash water utility
response.
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