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EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # 10 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. 20 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. 30 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 40 back in 2011, and there were two years of let's call it "no rain, " because that's what it was. 50 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. 60 SKILES: During that time period, Clinton Lake dried up to the point that there was no water CSC/Rock Creek Productions 1 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # Video 10/21/15 Audio being supplied to Clinton from Lake Clinton. NARRATOR V/O: Once they lost Clinton Lake 70 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 80 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 90 that Foss was that unlimited supply of water. … We could never pull it dry. 100 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. 110 TITLE GRAPHICS Drought Response and Recovery City of Clinton Clinton, OK NARRATOR V/O: Drought Response and Recovery City of Clinton Clinton, Oklahoma 120 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. CSC/Rock Creek Productions 2 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # 10/21/15 Video 130 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. 140 NARRATOR V/O: With their primary source depleted, and secondary source dwindling rapidly, the City of Clinton took action and implemented water restrictions, 150 MEIER: City of Clinton really stepped up and took a lot of significant conservation measures, so the impact was felt throughout the community... 160 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. 170 NARRATOR V/O: Limited supplies, however, also created challenges in maintaining quality 180 CSC/Rock Creek Productions SKILES: As Foss began to fall during that four 3 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # Video 10/21/15 Audio year period, the water gets much harder, much harder to treat. BRUSH: Operationally, the water treatment 190 facility was constantly having to be adjusted just to be able to meet water quality standards. BRUSH: The distribution system during the 200 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, 210 the city solicited proposals from multiple engineering firms trying to find the right solution 220 TEXT ID: Don Rodolph City Council Clinton, OK 230 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… 240 MEIER: As the project evolved, it fairly quickly pointed to an additional groundwater sources CSC/Rock Creek Productions 4 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # Video 10/21/15 Audio 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. 250 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. 260 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. 270 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%. 280 SERFOSS: Nobody wants to see their water bills go up. But they saw the necessity of it and overwhelmingly supported it. 290 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 CSC/Rock Creek Productions 5 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # Video 10/21/15 Audio reverse osmosis plant. MEIER: Any time you integrate a new source 300 of supply into a community's water utility, there's going to be challenges. 310 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. 320 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. 330 TAHMASSEBI: …we thought that the best way to handle this is through injection wells. 340 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. 350 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. CSC/Rock Creek Productions 6 EPA Drought Response and Recovery Clinton, OK – Overview Video # 360 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 370 when it comes to water. Never quit. Never assume that you have enough, because you don't. 380 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. CSC/Rock Creek Productions 7