By Robert Barron
Staff Writer
When you turn on the tap, water flows out cool and sparkling into your glass.
As you drink the water, it rolls across your tongue to be greeted hungrily by parched taste buds longing for nourishment.
Water may be the most important element in life, and it is a high priority for the city of Enid to keep the water flowing into the glasses of Enid residents.
Enid has fields from which they obtain water near its borders as well as Ames, Drummond, Cleo Springs and Ringwood. There are 140 wells encompassing 60,000 acre feet. Enid has a large amount of water rights and never has rationed water, except one summer when a pump went down in the city distribution plant.
The city is allowed to take one acre foot of water — the amount of water needed to cover an area an acre wide one foot deep — per year from each site. The pumping capacity of the city’s wells is 18.5 million gallons per day, and they average 9.5 million gallons per day, said Bruce Boyd, water production supervisor. Boyd has seen the demand as high as 17.2 million gallons in one day on a hot summer day.
“On a normal hot summer day, we will pump between 14 million and 15 million gallons a day,” he said.
All city wells are known to have some nitrate content, and the city has established run orders that mix water from all sources to keep overall nitrate levels down in the safe range. The city’s wells are regulated by Department of Environmental Quality, Environmental Protection Association and Oklahoma Water Resources Board. Workers must read the city meters monthly, which takes three days, Boyd said.
City officials have discussed expanding city water fields and dril-ling new wells, but Boyd cautioned drilling just anywhere won’t work.
“You have to hit that sweet spot. If you find a place that produces 50 gallons per minute it won’t do us any good,” he said.
City wells need to produce at least 150 gallons per minute to be effective, and most produce more than that, he said. The location of wells is critical.
Boyd believes if the city drills more wells, it will need to purchase more water rights to make sure the new wells have sufficient flow. Employees travel about 100 miles a day moving between water fields, depending on what they are doing. Water field employees like the job because they don’t do the same thing every day, Boyd said. They will do electrical work on the pumps, if necessary; mop and wax floors; mow the grass; or whatever job is necessary at the wells and pump houses. Boyd has worked for the city 24 years. He helped build the pump houses in Cleo Springs and Ringwood.
Enid is limited to drawing water from Cimarron Terrace Aquifer, which is a shallow aquifer and drought and pollution sensitive, Boyd said.
The water production crew spends all year preparing for the hot summer months when demand is highest. Boyd said the employee on call worked 40 hours overtime during the last two weeks. Employees must go out whenever a problem occurs to a well or pump, no matter what time of the day or night and no matter what type of weather.
They drive four-wheel-drive pickups because the water fields are in isolated areas where there are no roads, Boyd said, only tracks through either loose sand or areas that become extremely muddy and nearly impassable during heavy rain.
The Ames pump station came online in 1952. All of the Ames wells pump to it, and it pumps into Enid. Underground storage is pumped through a 30-inch line into Enid. Boyd said much of the equipment on the pumps has been replaced, and when that is complete they will sandblast and paint the pump station.
Everything operates electronically, and electrical problems can result in problems with a pump or water well any time of day. Workers can control how much water goes through the pumps and keep inflow and outflow even.
“Experts say the life of a field is 50 years, but Ames is 56 years old,” he said.
Crews rebuild pumps and motors as needed. There is a 10-inch to 24-inch line from the well house to the pump station. The size of the line depends on the number of wells in service. Ames and Drummond fields to Enid have 30-inch lines, and Ringwood and Cleo Springs fields have a 42-inch line to Enid.
The Ringwood pump station was built in 1983 and went online in 1984. It is controlled by a programmable logic controller, which is smaller than a shoebox and operates the pump station.
At the Cleo Springs station, the pumps put out 1,900 to 2,800 gallons per pump. It takes 28 wells to provide enough water for those pumps to operate. The Cleo Springs and Ringwood plants are identical.
Throughout the water fields, monitor wells check the water table constantly.
Enid also has to compete with a growing amount of irrigation activity in the area. More corn has been planted, and that crop requires more water than wheat.
Enid has two treatment plants that distribute the water pumped into the city from the water fields. The city adds chlorine and fluoride to the water.
“We have more problems during the spring storm season, but the summer has lots of power demands on the wells,” Boyd said.
Bringing water from the rural water fields is both complicated and expensive, but city officials want to make sure when you turn on the water, it flows out.
